At 4:16pm on November 15, 2014, my son was pronounced dead, along with a 1/3 of my heart.

The human mind is an incredible thing.  The way our body goes into shock still astounds me to this day.  I had never experienced shock on this level.  Nothing even remotely close to a tragedy like this has ever happened to me before. For a brief time, I saw myself in 3rd person.  It’s as though I had a view from the ceiling looking down.  I saw myself being comforted by my sister in law’s mother and my friend, Cheryl.  I watched myself sitting in a trance on a sofa.  I saw Troy pacing and struggling to breathe.  Keely held a look of astonishment on her face that haunts me today.  Colton appeared broken beyond description.  My father in law’s crying could be heard in all corners of that hospital, yet it seemed distant to me at the time.  Voices still sounded like people speaking in a tunnel.  At last, the tears came.

I knew I needed a priest.  It was one of the most clear thoughts I had.  I called the two closest to me.  With the time being so near to the evening hours, they were each preparing for Mass.  I left voicemails for both.  I had most of my family, but the desire to speak with a pastor consumed me. Right about then, Troy walked over to me and asked me if I wanted to see Dalton.  The thought paralyzed me.  What would I see?  How would he look?  Will his spirit be present in the room watching us as we cry?  Fear enveloped my entire being right down to my feet.  My body was grounded in that hallway and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to walk.  I looked at the pain in my husband’s eyes, took his hand, and walked the hardest steps of my life through a set of double doors leading to a room partitioned by a curtain.  I took one look at my baby boy and all the air was stolen from my lungs.

Looking at Dalton for the first time laying on that table is one of those memories that cripples me daily.  Not one day goes by without seeing that image.  Part of me thinks that is the devil’s reminder that he is the source of all death.  My son’s body was covered up to his chin with a thin, white sheet.  His eyes closed and puffy.  A tube of some kind remained inside of his mouth.  The left side of his head was stained with his blood.  At first, I couldn’t touch him.  I don’t know how long I stood there, cried, held Troy, or reminded myself to breathe.  I had never wept like that in my life.  I remember looking into Troy’s broken eyes as if to gain some sort of reassurance, but came up empty handed.  At last I pulled the sheet back and touched my son’s hand.  It was still warm.  I noticed a small cut on it that I had seen the Thursday night before as I cut his fingernails.  I traced every line on his hand as I have done 100 times before in church out of habit to relax him, as my Dad used to do with my own hand.  I worked my way slowly up his arm, across his chest, and up the side of his face.  I ran my fingers across his hairline, down through the middle of his eyebrows and nose, and back along his cheek.  My perfect baby.  The thought that I would never look into his beautiful eyes again on this earth struck me like a ton of bricks.  Those eyes. Only an hour and half earlier those eyes looked into mine and said, “I just came in real quick to get Tyler some gloves.”

Troy and I went to find Colton and Keely to ask them if they wanted to see their brother.  They both did.  Watching them grieve over the loss of their sibling intensified the pain to a new level.  He wasn’t just our baby, he was theirs too.  I wanted to take their pain away.  Each kid caressed his body with slow, careful motions as not to wake him.  Keely was consumed with sorrow, Colton appeared slightly withdrawn and angry.  We prayed together over his body.  Before we walked out, Colton walked back over to the table, bent over the body of his brother and sobbed uncontrollably.  The image was almost too much for my heart to take.  It still didn’t seem real.

Right about then, the first call came in from a woman asking me if I would donate my son’s organs.  It had been an hour since Dalton was pronounced dead.  I stood about three feet away from my son’s lifeless body and listened to her list off all the ways my son’s organs could help save another person’s life.  Still in shock, I said I didn’t  know.  She said that was okay and that she would call me back shortly to see if I had changed my mind.  I remember thinking how hard that job would be, asking permission to family members for the donation of a loved one’s organs.

The sheriff’s office sent a chaplain.  He was a kind, older man who spoke in a deep comforting voice.  We exchanged introductions and I said that I needed to know DD was in Heaven.  He grabbed my elbow, ushered me to a quiet corner of the hallway, and pulled out a bible.  “Jesus said, Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:14)  I cried in this strangers arms.  I wanted my son back.

More time passed. Somebody on the hospital staff brought me a cup of water.  I took a sip and threw it on the ground, immediately feeling embarrassed.  The woman wanting to know if I had made up my mind about Dalton’s organs called for the second time.  I told her we had decided not to donate Dalton’s organs.  Looking back, I don’t know why exactly we made that decision.  All is know is that once you make a decision like that, you can’t second guess your choice.  There is very little time in which this decision has to be made, and we were very emotional.  In the end, we wanted our child’s body to remain intact.

The sheriff’s office had investigators waiting to speak with us.  I wanted to know the answers to what caused Dalton’s death, yet didn’t.  We walked into a private room and listened to the details.  Dalton had been playing tag with his friend on the Rangers.  He took a turn too sharp around a tree, rolled the Ranger several times and suffered a severe head injury.  He had his seatbelt on.  His death was instant.  It was summed up in a couple sentences.  I had no questions for them.  A third call came asking me if I had changed my mind about the organs.

Father Schemm showed up at the hospital.  He looked at me, shook his head, and held me.  He followed us into the room where our son laid.  Together with my husband and my children, I watched my pastor read a “prayer for the already deceased” out of a small black book to my child while fighting back his own tears.  It was a moment I never want to remember, yet I’ll never forget.