My friend has a beautiful older home that’s tastefully decorated. He is a stickler for detail too – by his own admission to the point of compulsion at times. As I sat in his livingroom one day, I noticed something peculiar. There, hanging on the wall opposite from where I was sitting was a beautifully gilded museum-quality frame. One would expect that such a beautiful frame would possess an even more beautiful piece of artwork within it’s borders, as did the framed works of art on the adjoining walls. Yet as I looked at the frame and the place where one would usually see a painting, I realized that I was staring at a small, twisted-wire hanging cable which formed an upside-down ‘V’, draped over a hook screwed into the wall near the top inside border of the frame. A blank wall was visible behind. “Hey what’s up with the empty frame on your wall?” I had to ask. “It’s so I never forget those who have died, John”, my friend thoughtfully replied, a far away look was in his eyes. He went on to tell me that he had worked as a microbiologist and researcher during the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and had seen many die, including some he’d come to count as friends. The frame is a silent reminder.

Continued from Part 1  

“I am sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Terry, we honestly do not know if Jessica will live through the day”, as one of the doctors spoke, the other stared at the floor and nodded in agreement as we stood in the hallway outside the Intensive Care Unit’s waiting room. “When your daughter came down this morning she was initially in grave condition. While she has not gotten any worse since we were able to place her on a ventilator, and install what is known as a Greenfield Inferior Vena Cava (IVC) filter to prevent more clots from going to her lungs, she is still in extremely critical condition. If she does make it, I need to be straight with you. It will be an uphill battle for Jessica. One she will likely face for months, if not years.” Lisa and I stood there, completely stunned at the news as the two doctors who’d just stepped out of the ICU laid out what had happened with Jessica – how she had been doing fine as she recovered from the surgery she’d had two days prior – until everything went terribly wrong. “She was very close to death when the nurse on duty found her, it is nothing short of a miracle, actually several miracles back-to-back, that she is alive. Usually when people pass a blood clot such as hers to their lungs after surgery, they immediately go unconscious, then silently slip away. People with problems as severe as hers normally do not survive.” We were reeling. “Can we see her?”, Lisa had asked pointedly. I knew Jessica’s Mom would need to see her as soon as possible. “Soon”, came the simple reply.
 
The phone in our hotel room in San Diego had rung at about seven thirty that morning. A woman’s calm, somewhat cheerful voice on the other end spoke, “Jessica had a few troubles overnight, but she’s doing okay. You might want to come on in when you can.” Lisa and I had dressed, gotten a bite to eat, then went to her room on the post-op floor of Scripps Mercy Hospital only to find it empty. The RN at the nurse’s station was surprised to see us, “She was rushed to the ICU early this morning, she has some very serious problems. Go down there and ask for Dr. Zorn.” We did as instructed, then waited in the ICU waiting room for what seemed hours. We could not get any information about our daughter except, “The doctors are with her now, they are very busy and will be out to talk to you as soon as they can.” We obviously were not happy that Jessica’s condition had been quite understated during the earlier call to our hotel.
 
It was in late May, 2000, about a week after Jessica’s twenty-forth birthday when she and her Mother had flown from Sacramento to San Diego for an elective surgery known as the Ruen Y Gastric Bypass. I flew down a few days later to join the girls and to lend a hand in Jessica’s post-op care. Having battled weight problems for years, Jessica had hoped the surgery would dramatically improve the quality of her life. Now she was barely hanging on, surrounded by life-sustaining machinery, her good lung being worked double-time in order for her to have enough oxygen to survive. I counted eleven IV drips around her bed. She was in renal (kidney) failure, the high doses of Heparin (a blood thinner) administered in an attempt to reduce the size of the Pulmonary Embolism and force blood around the clot were also causing her to bleed internally. Jess was fighting for her life, numerous systems in her body had been affected by the initial shock caused by the lack of oxygen when a large blood clot known as a Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) passed from her leg to her lung. A team of eight specialists were assigned to her because she had been so close to death that her body had already begun to shut down when she had been discovered earlier in the day. Jess would remain sedated to the point of being unconscious, in critical to guarded condition in the Intensive Care Unit in San Diego for the next several weeks.
 
When she was released in July, we had begun the drive home when we received a phone call from the hospital – Jess was overdosed on blood thinners. We needed to be extremely careful that she not bump her head, etc. on the way. We stayed a couple of days with friends who were both registered nurses, had her checked our at a hospital in Sonora, a small city in the Sierra Nevada foothills, then took her home to Colusa, in the Sacramento Valley. She was still very sick, and had an open wound on her abdomen which ran from the bottom of her sternum to the top of her pubic bone. Her Mother diligently packed the wound daily until it closed. When she went home to Sacramento in August, we had thought once again her troubles were over. It was not to be. She would be back in the hospital just days after returning home with life-threatening abdominal problems which required emergency surgery. Days became weeks, weeks became months. Jessica would be in and out of the hospital – mostly in – through the following April – nearly a year since she’d gone to San Diego for the initial surgery. Lisa and I had remained at her side daily, Jess’ brother Justin along with many others filled the needs we had and managed our family’s interests in our absence. Difficult as those months had been, nothing could have prepared us for the events which lay ahead, eight years later. In the intervening years, Jessica met a wonderful man – and married Matt on November 16, 2002. They lived happily together as each adjusted to married life, experiencing, in Matt’s words, “deep companionship” – a depth of love and acceptance in which each thrived.
 
“Hi, it’s Dad, call me back when you have a few, sweetie.” Sadly, my phone call would never be returned. It was Friday afternoon, April tenth, 2009. Although we’d spoken just a few days before, I was on my way home to the Bay Area after spending the day with my granddaughter in Colusa, as I had done most Fridays for the past two years. On my way home it was my habit to almost always call Jess – the two hour drive was a good time for uninterrupted conversation. Besides, I’d been concerned for her. She had been experiencing acute, chronic abdominal and leg pain for months now, with no diagnosis. Eleven trips to the Emergency Room and numerous doctor’s visits had yielded nothing but frustration for she and Matt. Jess had been depressed and disheartened, at times she needed a walker in order to move about. Plus, her condition required her to use increasing amounts of pain medication – which she loathed. She’d been treated poorly by the medical establishment and now, finally, had been scheduled for exploratory surgery on June first. Frustration had turned to fear. The plethora of medical problems Jessica had endured when she was twenty-four had left her with a distinct fear of having surgery of any kind. Now, at thirty-two, the same fear was gripping her heart and mind. Had she lived to go through the surgery, the surgeon would have found two very painful conditions which would have easily been corrected. One of those conditions, gallstones, occurs in more than thirty percent of people who have had gastric bypass surgery. I am at a complete loss as to why this fact was not considered during Jess’ repeated trips to the hospital, yet was discovered during a routine ultrasound exam as her body lay motionless in a hospital bed, shutting down as she was dying on April 11.
 
Some closing thoughts.
Jessica led a life which was anything but ‘commonplace’. For years, family and friends often teased her about being a ‘drama-queen’, and she could indeed be quite dramatic! Yet a good deal of the drama which Jess endured in her young life was completely outside of her control or influence. It wasn’t until after she’d passed that I saw the eight year pattern I’ve referred to here. I don’t know if it’s even a significant thing – yet I do find it to be an interesting observation. From an eight year old being thrown from a vehicle traveling fifty to sixty miles per hour and being unhurt, to a sixteen year old hitting an oak tree dead-on and taking the steering column in the chest, to a twenty-four year old surviving what one medical professional classified as, “The largest Pulmonary Embolism I’ve ever seen in someone who lived”, to a thirty-two year old woman collapsing in her husband’s arms and succumbing to death, Jessica’s journey on this earth was anything but ordinary. Another interesting observation is in the fact that each of these occurrences was progressively worse than the previous. As a result, Jess last few years were remarkable, to those closest to her at least. From the hardship she endured, she drew close to God. I saw a woman emerge who was exceptionally wise beyond her years. Jess was a gifted counselor and confidante, as well as a wonderful friend – to many, including myself. Her ability to speak clarity into a situation or trial or circumstance was uncanny. I often left a conversation with her thinking, “Such clear and powerful insights.” Or, “I am amazed at her ability to see these things.” Or, she left me speechless.
 
Finally, to say I miss Jessica would be an understatement on the order of saying I miss breathing, or I miss the World Trade Center. When Matt scattered her ashes in the ocean on a day when the sun was shining and the sea was still and the surf was flat, it was their seventh wedding anniversary. For me, this was a bittersweet occasion. It is bitter because of the profound loss that I and my family shall continue to face, likely in one form or another for the rest of our lives. As a friend shared with me one day, “It’s as though there is a space inside that only Jessica filled. Since her death, the space remains, yet there is now an echo.” You might be wondering, “How could there be a ‘sweet’ component to all of this?” I began this writing with my girl’s birth. While I have chronicled the four toughest parts of Jessica’s life, in the years between there are more wonderful memories than could be written here. I purposely have not ended this with Jessica’s death – an event which blew an enormous hole in the lives of many. And, in the eternal scheme of things, I believe it was and is an event – a point in time where Jessica transcended the physical realm. She is not gone, she is gone from us. The present day is the ‘In Between’ I speak of in the title to this writing, for I shall see Jessica once again at a predetermined time in the future which remains unknown to me for now.
 
After Matt finished with Jessica’s ashes, he walked over and sat down on a rocky outcropping near where the rest of us had been standing. At that point, Lisa, Justin and I walked up to the spot at the water’s edge where Matt had been standing. There, on the sand, was a pile of Jessica’s ashes which had spilled downward as Matt cast the balance of them outward. We three – Jessica’s Mother, Father, and Brother stood there watching, arm in arm as small, gentle waves lapped over the ashes, slowly taking them away in their retreat to the sea. We stood there until they were gone, until all that remained was a blank stretch of sand. At that time, I turned and walked up the beach to Matt. He gazed up at me and slowly said, “She doesn’t belong to us anymore, John.” Rather than feeling alienated from my daughter, I understood the context in which Matt spoke and felt, for the first time in many months, at peace. I still do. Yes, I miss her terribly and continue to experience grief. And, yes, Jessica has truly left this earth – her citizenship in heaven having been sealed when she had been born from above while she was here. How beautiful is that? ◊