Echoes of the Death of Jarrett, Our Infant Son

I created the piece below for inclusion in an electronic book of Memories/Testimonies for our 55th high school reunion and wrote of how I put it together in the introduction.

The photo is of the crib, now in use by our family for 75 years, in which I and my five sisters were placed beginning in 1947, and the crib my three daughters slept in, but that never held Jarrett, my son, but which later held five of my grandchildren, of which Trey, the grandson within this story, was one.

***

Chris Orozco – Echoes of the Death of Jarrett, Our Infant Son

I wrote the story of the death of our infant son, Jarrett, as a separate piece, but then originally intertwined it with the story of the death of my father.  Eventually I removed my son’s story from my father’s story and created a new, more tender frame for the story of my son.  This story, now part of an even larger work – A Triptych Bright & Beautiful – The Strands of DNA – is of now, an unpublished manuscript encompassing the three separate stories of my father’s, Jarrett’s, and my mother’s deaths. 

I share a portion of this story because from past experiences in sharing this story, it has helped others again relate, and many times relate anew, to past painful events in their own lives, but now, within the more illuminating light of life’s acquired understanding and perspective.

The story – about sixteen years after our son died, my second grandson, Trey, was born and his parents gave him Jarrett as his middle name.  When Trey was six, maybe almost seven, his entire family – my daughter, son-in-law, and five grandchildren – were over our house and leaving late and it was obvious that Trey was very sick, probably with the flu, and we all decided he should just stay with us overnight to avoid the half-hour drive home.  His father, always very concerned with cleanliness, also wanted to make sure we would give Trey a bath.  They left, and the frame of the story of my son’s death is that time when Trey stayed with us that night because he was sick.  In the excerpts below, I only included two hospital scenes, with the rest of the excerpts comprising most of the story of that evening with my grandson.  This is a gentler echo of our son’s death than the entire thirty-seven pages of the full story.

***

Excerpts from:  A Triptych Bright & Beautiful – The Strands of DNA

***

Before I left the bathroom, I paused in my leaving and looked down upon my grandson for a moment.  He was not a baby anymore, the baby who would wonderfully smile for anyone, but he was now a young boy, who was sick, but now also clean, sitting in the bathtub, his little arms around his small legs, his head down, his body continuously warmed by the water of the shower – a little boy resembling, somewhat, an unborn baby still wrapped comfortably, safely, within his mother’s womb.  I remembered the first time I had seen Trey, my second grandson, soon after he was born.  The nurses wanted to warm him up a bit, and perhaps he was a little jaundiced, and they had placed his ample little naked body in a clear plastic bassinet and he was in almost the same position as he was now, then a compact little pink meatloaf being warmed under the light of heat lamps.

“I’m going to see if your grandma found pajamas for you, Trey.”

“And clean underwear, papa,” Trey said, his words muffled a bit by the water showering over him.  “My dad says I always need to put on clean underwear.”

“I know that, Trey, honey.  Just stay still though and don’t get up till I come back, ok?”

“Yes, papa, I’ll just stay here.”

***

A nurse appeared, a different nurse, an older nurse with light brown hair that covered her head in a soft wavy bush.  She stopped a step away from where I would have expected her to be when she spoke.

“I don’t know what religion you are, but do you want to call your minister?”

I looked at her for a moment without speaking, softly turning over in my mind the meaning of her question.  What manner of greeting was this?  I thought of Tom, our Sunday school pastor – he would not be the person I would call that night – I would call him tomorrow.

“I will call him tomorrow, it’s pretty late.”

“But maybe you would want him here with you.  I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you called him tonight.”

 I said nothing for a moment.  I continued to gaze at this woman and I noticed her eyes.  There was a slow hesitant search to her eyes, the small lines radiating from their corners tightly drawn together.  Inwardly I sighed tiredly; this cannot be easy for her.  I wondered if she had been chosen, or drafted, or urged, or forced to talk to me.  She was trying her best.

“I think I’m fine,” I finally said.  “I’ll call him tomorrow.  I might call a friend tonight.  He should know.”

 “Will he come here?” she asked.  “Maybe you need someone.  Maybe you’d like someone.”

“I think I’ll be OK,” I said, suddenly wondering if I was OK even then.  Did she see something in me I didn’t?

She looked at me, and in her eyes, there appeared a deeper anguish, communicating perhaps what had eluded her words, communicating that which still escaped my full understanding.

“Do you need to do something with the baby?  Maybe you want to have the baby baptized?” she said much faster in speech than before.           

A thought was awakening deep inside me, a thought I could not define, but whose presence I was beginning to feel as it quietly began to build within and formed words to speak.  Its murmur entered my heart and I became torn between listening to its silent speech and answering the nurse.

“No, he does not need to be baptized,” I said after a moment.

 Again, that deeper look came upon her, but then she calmed as the struggle was almost over within her.

“Is there something you need to do for the baby that your minister might do?  Does the baby need to be blessed?”

“No,” I said slowly, “he’s fine just the way he is.”

She looked at me again and said, with kindness in her eyes, “The specialist has arrived and he’s examining your son.  He’ll talk to you in a little while.”

I was surprised he was already here.  I was surprised he hadn’t already talked to me.

“Thank you,” I said as she turned and walked away.  

The thought seeking to define itself seeped deeper into my heart and the murmuring gave voice to a thought…the thought – she was trying to tell me that my son was going to die.

***

“Here you go, Trey,” my wife said as she entered the bathroom, “Look what I have here for you.  I put the pajamas and the underwear and one of your papa’s old bathrobes in the dryer and they’re all nice and warm.”

“Thank you, grandma,” Trey said lifting his head as I finished drying his hair with the towel.

“Your grandma used to do that for your mom and your aunts all the time,” I said.

“Trey, would you like me to make you some hot chocolate?”

“Yes, grandma, but can you put lots of little marshmallows in it.”

“Yes, I can.  Now get dressed.  It sounds like you feel a little better.”

“Maybe.  Papa’s going to read me some Berenstain Bears books.”

“Oh, that sounds good.  Papa loves reading stories to little children.”

Vonnie left and I let the towel hang from around Trey’s shoulders as I picked up the warm underwear.

“It’s Superman underwear,” I said.

“I like Superman, but Brett always says he gets to wear the Superman underwear.”

I bent over and held open the underwear of the Man of Steel and Trey put his small hands on my shoulders and looked down, and as he positioned his right foot to put it carefully in the underwear, I thought of how – my year of art history in college again coloring my world – such a scene as this with the towel and underwear and the studied yet delicate action of a boy would have, could have been painted – perhaps by the French painter, Georges De La Tour – with candlelight replacing the garishness of modern bathroom lights, the gentle glow of a candle capturing discreetly the soft contours of a naked little boy, perhaps the candlelight reflected in a grandfather’s eyes as he adoringly looks down upon the downturned head of his sick grandson, upon the  hair of the child he had just washed and dried with ever so much thought and care.

 This imagined painting, a gentle domestic moment forever captured with oil on canvas, is further lit with the faint glow of a dying fire in the fireplace in the background where hangs the bucket or caldron – I’m not sure which one it would be – in which the water was heated that was poured into the large bathing bowl upon the floor, discernible between the body of the child and the fireplace by the faint reflection of the fire and the flame of the candle upon its copper surface. 

This painting titled, “Old Man Bathes His Sick Grandson”, would cause, I would suppose, centuries of supposedly scholarly discussion on why the grandfather was the bather in the painting as opposed to the mother or grandmother or servant girl as usually depicted.  Was this an allegory of the ravages of wars upon the home, or an indication of the rustic grandfather’s assignment to a servant’s role in the home of the newly emerging Northern European bourgeoisie?  And all the while, for centuries, this scholarly debate would miss the simple truth completely, that…that…that the grandfather simply wanted to bath his sick grandson, and the glow of the candle and the fire in the fireplace were evocative of the memories of the old man loving and losing his own son, his only son, many, many years ago, and the adoring eyes of the grandfather are upon the child because…because I do adore him, because he is my grandson, and I never had the chance for all of this love and tender touch with my own son, Jarrett.

Trey put one foot in his underwear, then the other, and then I raised the underwear up his legs and gently over his private parts.  I then helped him into the pajamas, the top, just a little tight, and the bottom, then I wrapped my old white terrycloth bathrobe around him – oh, still so cozy warm and snuggly from being in the dryer – I hugged him briefly, kissed him lightly, and patted his bottom twice.

“Come on Trey Jarrett,” I said softly in his ear, then kissed it as I picked him up, “we’re going to read in our big bed and you’ll be between me and your grandma.”

“Will I get the hot chocolate in bed?” he asked quietly, just staring blankly away at nothing, still sick, but his continuing interest in the hot chocolate a promising sign.

“Yes, your grandma’s going to bring it,” I said carrying him down the main hall then turning left down the short hall to our bedroom.

“With marshmallows?”

“Yes, with marshmallows,” I said, then kissed his ear again, knowing Vonnie would put as many marshmallows as a loving grandmother could possibly put into a mug – the Disney Bambi mug with Thumper, I was sure, because Trey always asked for it, because he loved bunnies – and on the saucer she would also place more marshmallows just for him, just in case, just as any adoring grandmother would do.

***

All the marshmallows on the saucer were already gone.

“Do you want some more hot chocolate to drink?”  Vonnie asked.

“Maybe in a little bit,” Trey said quietly, sitting in our bed, propped up by pillows between Vonnie and me.  Most of the marshmallows in the mug were also already gone, gently spooned by Vonnie into his mouth, a few drops of chocolate on the white terrycloth robe still wrapped around him.  It can be washed.

“You want to know something neat, Trey?”  I asked as I put down the Berenstain Bears book I was reading to him.  I had only read four pages so far of the book, New Baby, and I had, oh…eight books or so more to go, grabbed from one of the bookcases in the family room from among all the many Berenstain bear books I had bought and had read to his mother, and my two other girls, starting more than twenty years ago.

“What, papa?”  Trey asked softly.

“Well, you know, Trey, not only are you the first grandchild we’ve had alone in our bed, but we didn’t even have your mom or your aunts in bed with us except when they were tiny babies.  So you are really the first.”

“Oh,” he said with no real interest. 

Oh…yes, he was really sick for he usually was overjoyed to be able to come over just by himself to make it special.  Once when he was four, pulling me aside to talk privately and looking around to make sure we were alone, he asked, “Papa, can I come over for a sleepover tonight, but just me, not Brett,” and I had smiled then and said I’d ask his mom and dad, and they said yes, and he did come over and that was fun.  But, now, he really looked tired and sleepy, even now with some sugar and chocolate within him, usually a fatal mistake at night with our children in terms of sleep, but now…well, we were grandparents…

“Do you want me to take you to your bed to sleep right now,” I asked, “or do you want me to read some more?”

“Read some more,” he said, as I knew he would, his eyes staring down the short hall through the open door.

“Trey, do you want me to rub your back a bit while your papa reads?”

“Yes, grandma,” he said, as I also knew he would.

“Ok, lay down on your side and I’ll rub your back,” Vonnie said and Trey lay down and snuggled into the pillows with his back to Vonnie and she put her hand under the white robe and began to rub his back over his pajamas.

“That’s good,” Trey said, his eyes barely open as I began to read again.

 ***

Trey was asleep with a little soft snoring sound, for he was stuffed up a bit and his little mouth was open to help him breath.

“We’ve never had a little boy like Trey to do this with,” my wife said laying on her side facing Trey, still gently rubbing his back, looking upon him with eyes not adoring but with a touch of sadness now carefully guarded, and a hint of joy in the glory of the moment, all awash in memories from years ago, in deep thought of what never was…  At least in my eyes I saw this in hers, but then I also knew perhaps, but probably, all this and more was already within my eyes, within my heart, moving all together, converging, interlacing, and intertwining like a living kaleidoscope of shadows and colors deep within.

“No, we didn’t,” I said, “But this is nice…it’s a quiet moment.”

“Yes, quiet.”

“He’s snoring a bit.”

“Yes.”

“He’s a little congested.”

“Yes, he is.”

“But,” I said, “he’s not passing gas.”

“No, that’s true,” Vonnie said and we both laughed softly.  For Trey, since birth, was legendary for what he could always joyfully eat, giving, as I would say, a whole new definition to chow-down.  And Trey, yes, was also legendary for the amount, the volume, and the pungency of the gas he could silently spew into the air, sending his older proper sister into loud accusing torrents of dismay, and his older brother and father – yes, let’s be honest, still very much an adolescent at heart regarding his sons’ farting – into squeals of laughter and delight accompanied with only feigned, horrified disgust.  And Trey, the subject of all the exasperated or feigned commotion, would just sit or stand quietly and grin with that so ever endearing smile with which he was also fortunately blessed with since birth.

“Do you remember when he cleared out the pew behind us at the Christmas Concert at church?”

“Oh, yes, I do,” my wife said then started laughing with the laughter I love, the laughter when she began to laugh at things in the past with which she was so initially mortified.

I looked down at Trey, now a little more noisily asleep, and thought, how with little grandsons, even with the passing of incredible volumes of their super-pungent gas – oh, especially the combined product of hot dogs and macaroni and cheese – they were still always adorable.  He was adored even now.  For within this blessed deep and quiet moment, Trey’s major passing gas exploits were now a topic of merriment and wonder and depthless joy for us, his grandparents, as we lovingly sheltered him, our sick six-year old grandson, between us in our big bed.

***

 I followed the doctor out and we stopped near the entrance to the intensive neo-natal care room.  I could see the nurse already busy with my son, his last medical rites.

“After you take the tubes out, how long after that will he die?”  I asked.

“Not long,” the doctor answered.

“An hour?  Fifteen minutes?”

“Oh, not an hour.”  The doctor looked at me, then to the nurse at my son’s side.  My eyes followed his, and I watched the nurse working on my son.

She worked briskly.  Her hand touched this switch, moving this tube, disconnecting that one.  Did I think she was part of a conspiracy?  No, I felt sorry for her, compassion even.  She knew that I was watching her, she knew what she was doing, she knew what the end product of her efforts would be, the sooner death of this little one, who was dying in and of himself, though fighting bravely, but still factually dying in and of himself.  How difficult, I thought, to be the hands that brings a sooner death to an object that is usually an object of love.

I hoped she loved my son.  I hoped there was pain or at least compassion in her heart.  I hoped…I hoped that the briskness of her step and actions was because she was coping professionally with pain, and suffering and death, and not just hurrying to get a job done.  I hoped my son was more than just a job to her, because he was much more than just a job to me.  I thought with horror of the hands of an abortionist who took the lives of babies, any one of which babies I would now gladly take.

“It should only take a few minutes,” the doctor said softly.

 “Will he be in pain?”  I asked.  I was concerned.  I was afraid.

 “No, he won’t feel any pain,” the doctor said.  “He’s not conscious.  There may have already been brain damage.”

 How do you know, I thought, asking the question deep within me without bitterness.  How do I know?

 “We’ll take pictures before we bring the baby,” the doctor said.  “You can go back to your wife.  We’ll bring the baby to you.  You’ll have him, he’ll be with you, when he dies.”

I watched him go to help the nurse.  He spoke to her and she looked up at me, then down again at her work.  He began to help her.  After a moment I went back to wait with Vonnie.

                                                                        ***

I bent over the bed and gently pulled Trey towards me so I could pick him up.

“How old would Jarrett be?”  Vonnie asked.

“He’d be twenty-two,” I said, surprised a bit as it was usually me who had to ask the question, surprised even more that I knew the answer right away.

“Oh, he’d be finishing college,” my wife said looking up at me with Trey now in my arms.

“Oh,” I said brightening and smiling, “yes, he would, hopefully.  That’s nice to think of.  Maybe he would have been a history major like me.  Maybe he’d also taken a year of art history like me.  I could never interest our daughters in art history.”

“Oh, hopefully not,” Vonnie said and laughed.  “I hope it would have been something like marketing or business like Jeannette.  Something he could get a job with.”

I laughed, thinking she sounded like her parents.

“Well, I don’t know,” I said after a moment.  “I’ve never been able to imagine much beyond doing well in school and graduating from high school for Jarrett.  I did hope once that he would have been better in math than me.”

“Well,” Vonnie said yawning, “He would have had me to help him.”

“Yes,” I said, shifting Trey’s weight, as he was surprisingly heavy for a six-year old.  “And sports too, you could have helped him with sports.  I was never any good at sports or even interested in them.  Maybe together we would have been good parents for him.”

“I hope so,” my wife said now reaching up to turn off her light.  “I think we would have.”

“I hope so too,” I said quietly, “I’m going to take Trey to bed now, he’s really getting heavy.”

“It’s all the food he eats.”

“Yes,” I said heading with Trey for the door, “I used to wonder where he put it all, but now I know.  He’s small but he’s sure a solid little chunk.  He sure has given a whole new definition to the concept of chow down, that’s for sure.”

“Goodnight, Trey,” Vonnie sighed as she settled down to sleep, knowing he couldn’t hear her, “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

And with that, I carried Trey down the short hall heading for the bed I had prepared for him.

***

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