Remembering when I faced my life’s lowest moment…
By: Miya Gaskins
Tags: Parenting, Faith and Life, God, Grief And Loss, Widowhood

I think we can all honestly say that there are painful realities that exist as part of the human experience that we all hope to avoid. Losing a parent, losing a spouse or partner to death or breakup, losing a child, losing anyone we love, losing in career, love, money, friendship, just losing, losing, losing, losing in any way. We often see these losses as our own private versions of worst case scenario. Because it’s the people that are co stars in our lives that we share our memories, purpose, laughter, hopes, dreams, tears with. They keep us company, they comfort us, they travel with us, suffer with us, celebrate with us. So yes, we don’t want to picture our journeys going on without our co-journeyers.

I had experienced various significant losses in my life from childhood. I lost my step father. I lost a younger sibling who was 10 months when she passed away. I can honestly say, the idea of losing those I love grieves me at the thought of it. So obviously, when I was only 30 years old, losing my husband, my first love, the father of our three beautiful children, I thought was the deepest hole of hurt a person could find themselves in. I never imagined that more loss awaited me during my adult life. After he passed away it seemed like loss and grief was not done with me. In the years that followed, I lost my maternal and paternal grandmothers as well as the mother of my step mother, and a sister who died suddenly one Christmas Eve while wrapping presents for her children. My deceased husband’s grandmother and grandfather also passed away. No matter how great my losses, I never reached my breaking point, the place where the heart literally cannot survive anymore pain. That absolute breaking point that life can sometimes bring us to.

About 9 years after my husband’s passing and the subsequent other major losses, THAT breaking moment did happen to me one day. Surprisingly, it did not occur relating to those losses. I always somehow kept pushing, kept breathing, and kept finding a way to survive the pain. Before I can describe that moment, I have to set up events that lead to that moment.

The year before my breaking point moment included highs like me buying my first, fully in my name, brand new car. I graduated with my Master’s degree and was launching my career as a newly licensed therapist. I started my first job as a paid therapist, and found myself trying to resurrect some semblance of a romantic life five years since becoming widowed. Yet, I ended that year finding out I was pregnant and the father was a man I spent time with for companionship, but had no intention of having in my life in any long term way. We weren’t madly in love, he was not a good match as a partner in life, my kids and family didn’t particularly care for him. Obviously being pregnant out of wedlock after my marriage, certainly was not on my adulting bucket list. I had three children from my marriage and I thought that part of my life had ended.

Being pregnant this time at age 38, kicked my ass! I landed on bedrest at 24 weeks until her birth, subsequently losing my therapist job I had worked so hard to get. The father and I were not planning for a future together for anything more than co-parents. Yet, when I gave birth to our daughter, something magical happened. There is nothing like bringing life into the world to remind you that you ARE alive. I can honestly say that a part of me died with my husband when he passed. Gaining a new member of my household, an innocent, perfect, little human somehow breathed new life into my soul. I wasn’t afraid to parent her without her father. I somehow overlooked what the judgement of others might be and what they might think of me. I just loved her with every fiber of my being. That first 28 days of her life are a blur of late night breastfeeding, sleep less nights, and love, love, love.

One day my new little love was in her car seat and had slept like an angel longer than usual and was strangely quiet. I reached down to unstrap her from her car seat and when I reached behind her, I felt a warmth from her back that did not feel good. I assumed for a moment that it was from her body heat and sitting in the car seat. She was so sleepy acting, and just not getting alert like she normally would. I don’t know what Mommy Spidey sense that kicked in but I instantly felt like something was not right. I kept calling her name and her warmth was not warmth, it was hot. I was an experienced Mom and I knew a 28 day old should not have a fever. I don’t know why I knew something was really wrong. I abruptly strapped her back into the car seat and immediately rushed her to the hospital.

As the hospital assessed her, without getting into the harrowing hours leading to a diagnosis, the best medical guess was she had Meningitis (an inflammation of the brain and spinal cord membranes). She was hospitalized and as I awaited what that meant, I landed on the worst moment of my life. I was told that her chances of survival without an outcome of death or severe side effects from her type of infection, her age, meant she had a 1 in 5 chance of surviving and even with survival likely to have significant impairment or disability. I cannot really describe that feeling. It was as if every moment of child hood trauma, every ounce of grief I had somehow survived, landed on me in that moment. I recalled a scripture as sometimes happens in big moments in my life. I heard the words that God does not put on us more than we can bear. I cannot describe the sensations of pain, fear, hurt, anguish that flooded me emotionally in that moment.

The problem was, there was no safe place to cry as hysterically as I needed to. I was also beholden to pumping breast milk so that I could give my baby girl the best chance she could to help her body fight infection that her body was not rightly equipped to fight. There were so many dark nights that came during her 30 days of hospitalization. I couldn’t afford food and lived on food coupons for the cafeteria from the social service department of the hospital. I couldn’t afford my cell phone bill so many days I relied on using the hospital phone to talk to my other children every day. I never knew that you could feel grief so deeply that all you can do is beg. “God, I know you are good. I know you have somehow seen me through storms I never thought I could endure. But this, God, I know I can’t survive. I know my soul cannot bear losing my baby. I cannot find any more hope or any more ounce of faith in me if I lose her.”

One night while resting in the parent room by night, meeting room by day, of the third hospital she had been placed in, I finally let the tears fall. I prayed through sobs. My body shook uncontrollably at times. I feared my sobs would echo through the vents of the barren hallways of the hospital. I held myself, wrapping my own arms around myself, with my knees to my chest, and my head buried in my knees. Holding my phone with no service, I followed TD Jakes voice from a song on my gospel playlist, and sang through the sobs, lips quivering, voice cracking…

“Give thanks with a grateful heart, give thanks to the Holy One, give thanks because He has given Jesus Christ His Son. And now let the weak say I am strong. Let the poor say I am rich, because of what the Lord has done for us. And now, let the weak say I am strong, let the poor say I am rich, because of what the Lord has done for us. Give thanks.”

TD Jakes, Give Thanks

TD Jakes and I sang that song all night together, an innumerous amount of times. Somehow, the flow of tears changed and turned from pain. Instead, they turned into tears of hope, tears of gratitude that God once again found me in the Grief Valley life dropped me in. Somehow after that night, I knew beyond a shadow of doubt, she would live. Yet again, I was reminded, every storm ends, I was not alone, and that this too shall pass. And after a 30 day stay, lots of scary moments…she lived. Today she is the sassiest, sweetest, most beautiful, nine year old any Mom could be lucky enough to have.