Breathless Haste

After much prayer, research, and a visit with the surgeon, we decided to have the surgery done at the   University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital on February 7, 1993.

That day began as expected, a seemingly routine and successful open-heart surgery. After a long day of waiting and worrying, we went back to our hotel to rest. We were awakened that night by the phone ringing beside our bed. We were told that Brock’s condition was deteriorating. He needed to go back into surgery, so the doctors could try to determine the source of the problem.

Being awakened by that call is seared into my memory. In fact, even all these years later, I can’t sleep with a phone beside my bed unless it is turned off or the ringer is disabled. That call marked the beginning of a seven-day nightmare that included Brock going back into surgery two more times. In the end, he never woke up. For whatever reason, the routine operation was too much for his little body, and he passed away on Valentine’s Day, 1993. Before we left him, Rebecca held him one more time. I can clearly remember the scene of her holding him in the hospital room; the shades were pulled down, and I could see sunlight peeking in around the edges of the windows. She remembers I declined that chance to hold him. Back then, my approach to grief was to get away from it as quickly as possible.