Just Being There

It's often hard to sit back while people close to us are suffering.  We don't know what to do and we wish that we could take all their pain and discomfort away.  We may feel like we are not doing any good by just sitting on the sidelines while they endure what they must.

Friday night, I was awakened around 1 in the morning to the cries of my youngest child.  She was scared, sad, and sick.  She awoke from her slumber to throwing up in her crib, a rare occurrence, to be certain.  My husband was with her, had cleaned her up and was trying to console her, but she was miserable and wanted nobody but Mommy.  I took her in my arms and went downstairs with her so we wouldn't disturb the rest of the house.

The rest of the night we spent together, just Gabriela and I, curled up in my little white Lazy Boy recliner.  We held onto one another as the hours dragged along.  I changed her clothes several times and used a few towels until I finally decided to just put a towel around her until morning.  She was hot, miserable, and thirsty but couldn't keep anything down. 

I gave her some children's electrolyte drink to sip every so often, but to no avail.  No sooner had she closed her eyes after swallowing a few mouthfuls than it came right back up.  That's how we spent the hours:  sip, throw up, clean, fall asleep for a couple minutes, repeat.  It really was one of the longest nights of my life.  Only once before have I felt so helpless...and that was when Benjamin was in the hospital when he was a baby.

There we sat, through the dark hours in the family room.  As she tried to sleep between fits of sickness, her little hands would cling to my shirt.  When she was awakened by her upset tummy, she would look at me so pitifully with eyes that seemed to say, "Make this go away, please?  I don't understand."  She started looking pale and lethargic.  She was exhausted from all her body had gone through.  I made up my mind that I would take her to the emergency center in the morning if she didn't start holding down fluids.

Around 7:15 I took her up to the bed with me as I was worried I'd drop her over the side of the chair in my own weariness.  There we lay, with two towels, waking and sleeping in spurts of sickness.  Shortly thereafter, Richard took over her care so I could get a little rest.  By noon, her fever had broken and she was sleeping restfully for the first time since she first felt bad.  She had gotten past the worst of it.  She was starting to hold down the Pedialyte.

As a mother, I wanted to be able to cure my daughter, but I couldn't.  I was helpless to do anything but to hold her, whisper lovingly to her, clean her up, and let her know she wasn't alone.  I couldn't wave a magic wand and take away her pain.  I couldn't just make her feel better.  And even though I felt helpless to do anything, she was comforted.

When someone we love is hurting, we don't always have to be able to solve the problem.  We don't always have to take it away.  Sometimes we can't.  But perhaps the only thing we have to do is to let them know we are there.  We help them clean up the mess and wipe them off.  We try to sustain them with little droplets of love.  We whisper words of encouragement and we hold them.  We let them know they are not alone.  And sometimes, even in the midst of all their trouble, they get a few minutes of peaceful sleep in the midst of the storm.