Memories

It’s strange how you can remember where you were who you were with and the smallest details of seminal events that color our history.

Twenty- five years ago today, I was standing in my kitchen covered up to my elbows in jerky marinade as I was attempting to make the treat homemade. Although labor intensive it seemed to be well within my skill set and I was anxious to use my new dehydrator.

When the phone rang, I picked it up as my husband was outdoors doing yard work. I heard in single words: accident, Emergency Room, air flight. Come now!

I called frantically to my husband to come NOW, at the same time ripping my marinade spattered blouse off replacing with a clean shirt.

It was a short ten mile drive to the hospital but a university football game traffic slowed the frantic drive.

Family filled the sidewalk in front of the hospital doors. Inside, my daughter in law sat, her face ashen.

Her mother came to meet us. The tragic story almost too sad to comprehend.

In time, an ER Nurse came to get the two grandmothers. We were led down a darkened narrow corridor to see our youngest grandchild. To say goodbye.

Nothing could have prepared us for the sight of our precious boy with a a row of angry metal staples holding his small head together. In the background, the woosh of life-support equipment. This.was not to save his life but his viable transplantable organs.

The transplant team, chaplains and nurses had taken me aside beforehand with the grim frankness of the prognosis. The request of me to convince his mother to let him go.

The day was one of the saddest of my life. Phone calls to great grandparents; a phone call to my son, his father, who was in prison. The rest of the day and following week unfolded in black and white like a silent movie.

I remember other events that marked time on my life but none like the death of baby Joshua, that burned grief indelibly ony heart.

© Nancilynn Saylor

September 25,2018