Happy Birthday, Dawn
September 6 will mark my daughter’s 23rd birthday, but Marty and I have been celebrating Dawn’s birthday without her for 18 years. To all of you who have had a child die, you well know the painfulness of empty arms syndrome.
Dawn was born with three holes in her heart (2 ASDs, 1 VSD), no natural connection between her heart and lungs, and was eventually diagnosed with DiGeorge Syndrome: tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia.
God blessed Dawn with an amazing mind. From moment one she was bright-eyed and interactive. We cannot recount the number of times we heard expressed, “Wow! Look at the intelligence in those eyes.” It was a word-for-word expression spoken by strangers, family, and medical staff. Every doctor Dawn saw made this same expression. This proved to be a blessing for Dawn because her body couldn’t do what other children’s bodies could do, but Dawn could figure out how to compensate and make it work for her in her mind and then without trial or error, she would show us. For example, we called Dawn our little two-by-four. She had to stay upright and straight to breathe, so she was cruising at a very early age but did not stand alone or walk without holding on for 15 months. The day she figured out how she could stand was the same day she started walking. No wobbly steps, but as if she had been walking for an entire year. Another time, a therapist came to the house and asked if Dawn walked backward. I had never observed this. But you could see Dawn was preoccupied with that concept within her mind for the rest of the visit. When the therapist left, Dawn waited for me to come back to the living room, she looked at me straight in the eyes and started walking backward. “I stand corrected, you can walk backward!” I exclaimed and scooped her up and gave her a big hug as she laughed! This is how Dawn approached life.
The passion of Dawn’s short life was God. She summed it up well in talking with her great-grandma, “I love Jesus so much! He has been so good to me, and that is why I love everybody!” A common theme of conversation for Dawn was, “I want to sit on Jesus’s lap and pet all the animals, and they won’t bite.” She indeed loved God, everyone, and all animals. Our best pictures of Dawn are of her in contact with nature and animals.
God was Dawn’s Sustainer. According to her Cardiologist, Dr. George, Dawn did not have enough lungs to be alive. Many times, it seemed Dawn was not going to pull through, but then God would step in and perform a miracle right before our eyes. When she was two years old, she had her fourth and final surgery which was to close the VSD (bottom of the heart) hole. But as was typical for Dawn, due to all her unusual plumbing (as the doctors called all her extra blood vessels), things did not go as planned. Dawn was so miserable but never complained, only quietly endured what was her lot. The doctors came in to tell us things would not get better; they had miscalculated the size of the hole in her heart, and this is how Dawn would be for the rest of her life, and the surgery could not be reversed. “Oh no,” I exclaimed, “we have not come this far to end up like this,” I called my sister who started a prayer chain (by this time Dawn was known around the world). I asked her to ask everyone to pray at 7 pm in their time zone. Dawn was immersed in prayer for 24 hours. And after 24 hours Dawn was on the playground, playing like any other child. No one would have ever guessed that 24 hours prior she had been given a sentence of basically a vegetable for the rest of her life. Yes, God and Dawn had a very precious connection. And I think this was one reason Dawn’s death came as such a surprise. God had always pulled her through but now it was Dawn’s time to rest, and we had to accept that. But oh, how my arms physically ached.
But that is not the end of the story! The good news is, a day is coming when Dawn will be placed back in my arms, and your child in your arms, and the empty arm syndrome will be forever mended. This is the blessed hope (Titus 2:13) that has carried me through the past 18 years.
Hang on, just a little longer. Our loved ones are resting, but God is coming to wake them up from their sleeping graves (1 Corinthians 15:52). I can hardly wait! The dead in Christ shall be raised, and we all will meet the Lord in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)! Together we will receive the promise, be made perfect, and rejoice (1 Corinthians 15:53-57; Hebrews 11:39-40) and God will wipe away all our tears; for there will be no more pain and no more death (Revelation 21:4). Oh what a day, what a day, that will be!
Blue Skies,
Dana West, RDN, LD, DIPACLM
PS. If you would like to learn more about Dawn’s life you can order my book, Start a New YOU!® Reflections.
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