Things I Need

Friday morning a few hours after I wrote my last post, I woke up to hear my husband's phone vibrating. He was asleep, so I jumped out of bed and ran to it, thinking it might be the hospital calling about Elijah. I was surprised to see that it was my mother's house phone.

"Hello?"
"Amanda?"
"Yeah?"
"Is Adam there?"
"Um, yeah, let me wake him up."

Adam took the phone, and I crawled back into bed. I could still hear mom's voice through Adam's earpiece.

Are you in the bedroom?
"Yeah."
Can you walk into the living room for a minute?

...which is when I figured out that something was horribly wrong and mom didn't want me to hear what she had to say. I prayed that whatever this was, God would sustain me and give me the strength to face it.


Adam came back into the bedroom and told me that my brother had died the day before.

Phil went swimming in a river in a state park in St. Louis. He had a snorkel, a mask, and flippers. In my mind's eye, I saw him buying them in Walmart for the express purpose of going swimming that day. I saw him in a snorkel and mask, dancing on the side of the river in his flippers. They found a flipper before they found him. He had drowned in 8 feet of water, 15 feet from the shore.

I had almost called him the night before. I wanted to tell him about Elijah, but I decided not to. I remember looking at the clock on my phone a little after 7 and deciding not to bother him. He didn't know Elijah was sick, and I didn't feel like telling him about it. I'm glad I didn't call. They found his body at 7:30. Even if I had called, he was already gone.

My last conversation was a good one. I talked to him on Saturday, the night before Elijah got sick. Phil had panicked when I went into labor because he thought I was going to die. He told me he had cried and wailed and that he was so sorry for all the bad things he ever said to me. We laughed at his dramatic response, and I told him how beautiful Elijah was. We made plans for when he was coming to Florida in the summer.

I cried for 30 minutes on Friday morning. Then the phone calls and texts started pouring in. Apparently, the news had hit Facebook before it even got to us. My friend came over with chocolate and flowers for a few minutes before the phone rang again.

This time it was the hospital. Elijah had not improved the way they had wanted him to, and now the surgeons needed us to be at the hospital as soon as possible to explain the surgery to us and get us to sign consent. So, with the news of my brother only an hour old, Adam and I drove to the hospital to submit to major surgery on our baby.

I spent the entire day in the hospital. Elijah did great through the surgery. They had to remove part of his small intestine where the large and small intestines meet. They brought the bowel to the surface and attached an ostomy. I'm still not sure how it all works, but suffice it to say that his bowels are unattached, his matter will evacuate from the ostomy, and they will reattach him in a couple of months when he's bigger. The surgeons felt really good about the operation, and provided he finishes the antibiotics and bowel rest without event, this should be the end of Nec. If it happens again, which is rare, it will be a completely unrelated case of the disease.

People keep asking me if I need anything. I have decided that these are the things I need:

I need to hold my baby again after not being able to hold him for over a week
I need see him growing and getting stronger
I need to see him come home
I need to hear Phil's voice one more time
I need to wake him up by jumping on him one more time
I need to laugh with him about memories we have with our dogs, cats, and hermit crabs
I need to tell him one more time that I love him

If anyone can give me those things, please contact me.

If not, prayers are appreciated.