It has been two months since Zach’s incident at the pool. We’ve experienced the whole gamut of emotions, especially hours and days following. (To read what happened click here.)
Eric accompanied Zach in the ambulance to the emergency room and I darted home to retrieve a few items…dry clothes, phone chargers, Piggy Blankie and Puppy. I left the car running and bounded up the stairs to Zach’s room. I stood in the middle of his room and the thought crossed my mind: what if he hadn’t made it? What would it feel like to enter his room if he had drowned? Those were the first of the what-ifs that still haunt me. I was weeping when I raised my arms to the heavens and cried out THAAAAAANK YOUUUUU, my voice primal and animalistic once again.
I was hysterical with my mom on the phone as I drove myself to the hospital. I parked and checked in at the front desk, my eyes puffy from crying. It was 6:45PM, only one hour after the safety break whistle blew. Zach looked so small in his hospital gown, and I knew the opening in the back would be embarrassing to him. The staff was changing shifts so there were a lot of introductions and instructions. Through it all, Zach remained stoic, silent and expressionless. Even as they drew blood and stuck him with an IV, he was unflinching. 
I was left alone with Zach when Eric went home to fetch Noah and deliver him to my mom. The nurses brought Zach a coloring book and crayons and I thought back to my social work days when I learned that coloring can be therapeutic for children. He had still barely spoken, not even giving his name when asked by the doctor. Finally, his first out-loud sentence pierced the silence and my heart: “it was all your fault.”
I can feel your collective wincing and I’m inclined to do the same, even after months of processing this moment. This would become the first of five times that Zach pointedly blamed me for his near drowning. By the grace of God, I never came unraveled. I was calm and composed when I embraced him and responded each time, “oh Buddy. I am so, so sorry. I will never let anything like this happen ever again.” Only once did I ask, “buddy, why do you say that it’s Mommy’s fault?” He replied matter-of-factly, “because you didn’t put my life vest on and you weren’t watching me.”
Zach needs resolution. He doesn’t like open-ended possibilities and ideas; everything needs to circle back. Blaming me was the cause and effect his brain searched for that allowed him to come full circle. You want to know the crazy thing? I never felt guilt. Even standing at the end of my 4YO’s pointed finger, I felt no guilt. I only feel gratitude, the kind that drops you to your knees in a mess of emotion as you squeak and gulp and sob your thanksgiving to your Maker.
Thirty seconds of mercy. What if the lifeguards blew their whistle at 5:46 and not 5:45? What if Casta silently wondered where Zach was but shrugged it off and went about splashing with her siblings? What if Jacques and the other angel-strangers were out of arms reach instead of at the pool’s edge as I hoisted Zach into their unfamiliar arms? And the biggest question of all, Why was Zach’s life spared? In a Summer of highly publicized drownings and seemingly endless tragedy, why did the Lord have mercy on us?
Zachary: remembered by God. We chose his name because of our difficulty in conceiving him. He was born and as Eric and I held him for the first time, tears rolled down our cheeks. Over four years later we would find ourselves holding our son in a hospital bed with those same tears of gratitude pooling on the floor.
Dramatic Paddocks 