Passing in the Night - Short Story

Passing in the Night
A story of SIDS
(originally posted on my Myspace blog on August 3rd, 2009, I have written different variations on this story, it is for all intense and purposes as it happened, obviously dramatized, i was going on 3 at the time.  Pieced together from a subconscious memory I continue to dream since it happened, and talks i've had with both of my parents.)

The baby cried as he often did, just a little, probably in his sleep, but that cry would forever haunt the parents all their lives. They would ask themselves, if I had responded and arose from my bed, and strolled just feet down the hall would my son still be alive. They would not be able to say for a certainty if it would have changed a thing, but uncertainty is a horrible thing. For that was how the night had begun.

A baby’s simple little cry in the night. They were not neglectful, on the contrary, they gave their son the utmost attention, rushed to his every inkling, took time to discover what was wrong. The little being had existed three months in this world, and sometime around two in the morning on a Valentine’s day in nineteen ninety his life left him, and he passed from this world. But it was not neglect that made them stay in their beds, it was the routine, it had happened before, a simple cry in the dark, and then he would go back to sleep, and it can only be surmised that that was what it had been. The cry in actual fact had nothing to do with the passing, but the parents continued to ponder it, to this present day.

At some point hereafter, the mother arose from her bed, responding to the cry, just in case something was wrong. What she found in the crib was a sleeping babe, but resting in sleep of the eternal. It is said God accepts all babes, for they are the innocent, perhaps that is why he takes some, to keep them from being corrupted on this earth, to save them from hardship. But tell that to the family’s, and they’ll be enraged, for why should he remove from them their joyous laughs, there cuddly faces, there wonderful gooh’s and gah’s. In their searching eyes, family’s have seen beauty in a bleek world, and when the candle fades away, and the life force gone, where is the beauty now.

A closer investigation by the mother to her infants frame, she discovered that his chest was not moving, and that his body was still. And she screamed for her husband, who came rushing at once, for it was a scream that stated the worst, and no one can ignore a scream such as this, or even understand it till they’ve known. When the man had arrived, the mom was cradling her babe, beckoning him back to liveliness, hoping that he would cry, those cry’s that they found so repetitive, how much she would give, what a sigh of relief she’d relinquish if she could just here that amazing annoyed cry of her son once more. And it is strange how we long for the things that we never thought twice of as anything grand, such as the changing of a diaper or the suckling of a bottle, and how much now were they wanted, and missed, that it was uncanny the way the world could work.

She passed the baby boy into her husband’s arms, and rushed for the telephone, and dialed out the emergency trying to sound collected and frenzied all rolled into one. And then they walked about bouncing the baby gently in folded arms, hoping in some way it would return him to them. They could not accept the worst, they could not accept this horrendous thing. And in their commotion they awoke their eldest son, and he could tell straight away that something was wrong with his littlest brother, for the other little brother was still asleep in his room, soundly sleeping while all hell broke loose.

The father and mother tried to inform in the most childish ways to the their six year old boy that his brother was resting a very long sleep, and they even tried to tell him it would be okay, and he tried to believe them, but in their faces were signs of belief that this just wasn’t so, and that he could not hold his baby brother anymore. And he wept, he cried out, tears streaming down his face, he could feel the joy escaping, he could feel the saddened future approaching, as if a sixth sense had grabbed hold of him, so he grabbed hold of his mother nightgown and clung on, hoping to hold them back from such a fate.

And then the police arrived, and the ambulance wasn’t far behind, and the police came inside and began asking questions. It was the flashing lights that awoken the soon to be three year old from his slumber. It was the lights that passed through his window, first red, and then blue, and then red once again that forced him to stand up off his bed, and rub the tired from his eyes, and walk himself down the dark hall to the fully lit living room. What he saw he did not comprehend, at first he thought maybe his mom and dad were in trouble, for he figured that was what the police had arrived there for. But when he saw his father pacing about the small trailers kitchen in a most agitated and frightful manner who knew other things were wrong. There was his big brother still clinging to their mother who was talking to the police and holding their baby brother, whom she then passed on to the paramedic, who took him outside and right out of view.

The father did his best to collect up his two sons, and to escort them out to the car, telling them that there was something wrong with the little baby boy, and that their mother was going to ride in the ambulance with him, to keep him company and to hold his hand. They a trio of male’s jumped into their rickety little car, and drove as fast as they could to keep up with the ambulance as it raced through the Ravenna country side to the hospital miles away in the next town.

Inside the speeding emergency vehicle, the mother held her baby Jordan’s hand, and would not take her eyes off of him, repeating to him, hoping his ears could hear her, “Jordy, Jordy.” And she continued again, it is unclear if she said it the whole way there but it was absolutely not beyond possibility, for hope continues on, it fights, and hope can hope that a familiar voice saying a familiar word can pull back life from beyond. And maybe it can, but tonight it couldn’t, and somewhere inside the mother knew it was done, but her motherly compassion couldn’t let it be so, and so she continued to mutter, “Jordy Jordy,” to her little infant son.

In the hospital they sat and they waited, it may have only been minutes but it had felt like hours and hours, they waited for inevitable news, and when the doctor came out he gave it to them straight, and the father yelled out a fierce unnerving cry, and burst into sobs, crying the cry of the broken hearted, a cry that cursed at God, a cry that wanted an answer that would never come, no matter how hard the cry questioned. The doctor told them they could hold him if they wanted, just one last time. The father could not do it, he couldn’t take the finalization of it all, and he somehow believed even if he wasn’t thinking it consciously that if he kept his eyes from his lifeless son, and his hands off his cold body that it couldn’t be true.

But the mother had to hold him, it was instinct inside, and instinct brought on from love, and compassion, and from carrying him in her womb. No one can understand the power of a good mother’s love, not even this narrator can fully comprehend. The love was not gone yet, and maybe she was in shock, but she held him as delicately as she had ever done, and kissed his forehead like she often did. And she stood there rocking him as if nothing were wrong. And she still loved her little son, she loved him so much, too much in fact, her shock was so great that she couldn’t even cry, because her love was grand. At one point though, after holding him sometime, she had to hand him back to the doctor telling him, “he’s turning blue.”

It was the worst night of their lives, and was not likely to be replaced.

There were no answers for what had happened, only questions, and unnecessary blame. Blame from one side, and blame from another. Doctors throwing out answers that they did not know for sure. What caused the passing of this beautiful child, no one really knows, but he was not the only one with this mysterious passing, in the world there were hundred more. SIDS was what they called it, the bastard took many lives, and left many family’s broken and unsure. Left many family’s wondering if they were the causes of it. It made them ask themselves should I have laid them a certain way, had I killed my? And the answer was never to clear, and so some would say yes. But in truth every which way a baby had been laid was reported as still producing a victim to SIDS, so it’s not fair to say someone should have done something some way, because who really knows; neither you nor you or I.

I’m writing this because I wanted to. I’m writing this because I needed to. This is about the night my brother Jordan died, I am the middle son. And it may be sad and it may depress you, I don’t care, that’s your problem. It’s affected my family and I, to this very day, and it is a horrible thing. Perhaps it has shaped me into what I am now, but I am not afraid to say I wish my little brother was here, I wish he was here growing up the same as you and me.

He would have been twenty-one October 26th.