These Things I Wonder

There are so many things I wonder.

Questions without answers.

I wonder how many times people have seen a child, or someone you love, attached to breathing tubes.

I wonder how many people know what it’s like to keep a nebulizer in the house, so October until March your child has breathing treatments.

I wonder how many know what it’s like to miss multiple days during a school year, and for your students to say, “Mrs. Bridges, wasn’t your daughter just sick?” during the fall and winter.

I wonder how many know what it’s like to create flipped lessons, and teach from home before COVID-19 ever came. I taught while I held a child coughing on my lap.

I wonder how many people know what its like to hear your child has liquid in her lungs again. You listen to her struggle for another breath.

She hated the nebulizer and all the masks, and we called him “Mr. Penguin” because it was a penguin.

I wonder how many know what it’s like to hear the sound of water in your child’s breath.

There are so many things I wonder.

Questions without answers.

I wonder how many people have witnessed their child almost die, and then she dies years later.

Gratitude was short lived.

When people debate whether or not to wear a mask and are convinced it’s a government conspiracy,

I wonder.

If they believe, like a fifth grade student that shouldn’t have to stand in line with the class to wait and go into the bathroom anymore, someone is telling them what to do; I wonder if they know what it’s like for your heart to beat faster when COVID-19 starts because you know your child is vulnerable.

For the first time in her life in 2019-2020, Corrie Bridges did not have pneumonia, bronchitis, nor did she have to get more X-rays. She was due to be tested for asthma in 2020 once she entered Kindergarten.

When the news, just plain old news, showed a baby who’d died from COVID-19 in April, Corrie asked me, “Mommy, COVID-19 kills babies, too?”

“Yes, baby, it does.”

“And she’s with Jesus?”

“Yes, baby.”

We didn’t take Corrie anywhere, and if we did, she was outside or stayed in the car with one of us.

Corrie did not die from COVID-19. She died from an undetected tumor, and I blamed–and still blame myself–for not being as meticulous when the stomach first felt hard as I was in protecting her from COVID-19 and pneumonia.

But, you see, my sorrow, joy, memories, love, devotion, protectiveness, and relationship with my daughter, my baby girl, was not buried with her body on the hilltop below the bells.

All those things live still.

I wonder how many people know what it’s like to be on an ambulance with your child, to do CPR on your child, and to see the life leave your child.

There are so many things I wonder.

Questions without answers.

I wonder how many people know what it’s like to live with nightmares, and wake up to find you’re still breathing. Yet, you’re unsure of where you are.

I know what it’s like to care less about vaccines and masks, but not for the shaken up bottle of conspiracies some others believe.

Last summer, I cared less about the vaccines and masks because, as far as I was concerned, COVID-19 could take my life. I was fine with the fact it would end my life if I didn’t end it first.

I survived because of family and friends, but most importantly my son. I am not right or left. We are not cartoons painted in black and white. We are not simple spitfires or believers. We, as individuals, are far more complex.

I say this to remind readers who might see this post as political to remember the people who helped me survive were of different backgrounds and political beliefs. I didn’t care to which institution they dedicated their beliefs because I know who was with me when I held my daughter’s hand. I know who made sure I survived, ate, and remembered:

“You still have your son,” …

which brings me to my final point of wonder.

I wonder how many know what it’s like to watch your second child die in different ways in your nightmares after you’ve lost the first.

I wonder how many know what it’s like to live with the fear that when your child goes into the world, and some people think COVID-19 is a unicorn or a conspiracy, something could happen to him.

I wonder how many people know what it’s like to own a plot you wish you didn’t have, and know there’s one more on the other side.

I wonder how many know what self-control I have in public to keep myself from screaming in the face of blind stupidity when people discuss vaccines or masks as control or conspiracy.

I wonder how many know what it’s like to hear a child’s laughter in the evening.

Then the next day comes a silence you will live with for the rest of your life.

I wonder how many people value my son’s life.

This will be my first and last commentary on masks, vaccines, and COVID-19, but these words have laid upon my heart.

Please make a smart choice if you’re unvaccinated, so you never have to wonder these things.

By Rebecca T. Dickinson, Hayes’ Mom