Chapter 5 by Mildred Krentel.....Melissa Comes Home
The next morning when they brought her into my room for her early feeding, I checked her over carefully. Ten fingers, ten toes----the usual mother’s routine, but accompanied by an unsung love ballad.
And then it was that I noticed her large saucer like eyes and the tiny, tiny slant in her left eye.
I propped her alongside me and she collapsed into a small uncompromising heap, like one of those Japanese sleeping dolls.
“They must have forgotten to put any starch in you honey, I whispered into her flat pink ear, wondering who in the world she looked like. Brother Bob? Or big sister Diane? Or possible some forgotten relative?
Quite unbidden, there came to mind the face of a twenty-ish girl whom I had not seen for many years. Sunday after Sunday, she had attended our church in Greensboro, always placing herself in the very front pew. I seemed to recall that she had a rather unusual first name; Geide!
I stared anew at my baby lying asleep in my arms. Melissa looked exactly like Geide! And I began to shiver from head to foot. For Geide was a mongoloid.
“Dear God, how could You?”
I lay back against the pillow and let the tears roll in a deep soundless sobbing. When the nurse came to take Melissa from my arms, I could not open my eyes. I wept for myself, too old and too tired to even think of more babies. I wept for my family at home, and I wept for my husband, my love. Oh, surely this would break his heart.!
The three hours that I lay there waiting for the morning visit of my pediatrician were of the purest agony.
And then, footsteps down the hall. My obstetrician poked his head into my room.
“How’s the new mother?”
I turned my face away toward the window. He walked over to my bed and patted my foot cheerily.
“I’m worried about my baby.”
“Now, now, why should you worry? Your little baby girl is perfectly all right---face a little bruised from delivery but other than that----” His voice trailed off.
I managed a quick smile so that he would go away. He left, reassuring me every step of the way to the hall.
Maybe I was getting neurotic. Where was my baby’s doctor? I must hear it from him.
When at last he appeared, in his faultless attire, I brushed aside all amenities.
“What does a mongoloid baby look like?”
He turned away from me, too quickly, and then began to answer in a deliberately professional manner, devoid of any emotion.
“The mongoloid child has a broad face; the bridge of his nose is flat, and the eyes appear to be almond-shaped. those are the signs you would most easily recognize. Of course, there are tests too.”
Do you suspect my baby of being a mongoloid?”
“We were waiting for the results of a few more tests, but your suspicions have made it easier for me to tell you that she is afflicted with Down Syndrome---a mongoloid.”
Well, there is was. I did not need to hear more It was a cold, bleak fact. I had given birth to a mentally retarded child.
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There is a spiritual called, “ I Won’t Have to Cross Jordan Alone.” This was a terrifying Jordan, and although I was well acquainted with the one who had promised to cross with me, it was so very black all around me, I could not seem to find His hand. It seemed to me, in those terrible moments, that I would have to cross all alone.
I put in a long-distance telephone call for Paul who had flown to Pittsburgh for the day. He was in the office of one of the vice-presidents of United States Steel.
“Paul, I need you. Can you come right home?”
“What’s wrong, honey? Tell me, what is wrong?”
“It’s not me.”
“The baby?” His voice was incredulous.
“Melissa is a mongoloid.” How utterly cruel of me to package a heartache so neatly in four little words. The impact was immediate.
He was at my side in two and a half hours. He stood in the doorway for a long minute just looking at me, tears streaming down his face. I could hardly bear his grief. It is an awesome thing to see a big man break down and sob.
That evening, towards dusk, my husband and I were able to talk and reason together. There had come a calm and quietness. And we haltingly began to clothe with words our acceptance of the present and our worries over the future.
The doctor, in his impersonal way, had already suggested placing Melissa in an institution. But all our instincts screamed against the thought of turning over to others the particular burden that God had given us. We would take our imperfect angel home.
Yet, somehow, through the pain that even talking about this gave us, we felt that we were not thinking clearly, not separating emotion from reason. We then did the only thing we knew.
We turned to the problem over to God. He had sent it in the first place, and He certainly must know how He wanted us to handle it.
“God, Melissa is Yours and so are we. You have promised wisdom to those who ask. OK, we are asking!”
We began to consider the four other normal healthy children which God had given us and the solemn responsibility we had to each of them as well as to our baby. Would bringing Melissa home create an intolerable situation for them? Would we end up devoting our lives to one we could never cure, at the expense of four teenagers who also needed so much from us?
Then the pendulum would swing back again. The feeling of guilt that accompanied the thought of giving our baby up was overwhelming. We felt as though we would be side-stepping our God-given duty. And to be honest, there was the fear of outside censure. would not our friends and neighbors be critical? How much easier to win their respect and admiration if we brought Melissa home, gave up our outside activities, and dedicated ourselves to the care and training of this special child with her special needs.
Here, too, we realized that we must not allow our feelings of guilt to dictate our decision. Our baby’s welfare must be our first and most important consideration.
Melissa would always need someone to care for her physical and emotional needs. She was entitled to the privilege of associating with people on her own level, with similar mental and social capacities. Had we a right to isolate her in a cocoon, albeit a cocoon of love? And what about the inescapable fact that we might not always be here to take care of her? I was forty-two and Paul was forty-three. We must plan realistically for her future.
Pearl Buck, in her book, The Child Who Never Grew.says it all so simply: “The world is not shaped for the helpless.”
Finally we came to the most important truth of all: Keeping Melissa
at home would not make her be any more “accepted” by us, nor would placing her in a special home make her any more “rejected.”
So it was that we decided to place Melissa in a home for retarded children.
I remembered reading somewhere about the two kinds of sorrow that man must endure. One was called “escapable” and the other,
“ inescapable.” The first occurs where death strikes--swift, final and irrevocable. but the door is closed. The freshness of the agony dissipates. the days and years pass; there is a welcome blurring of the memory, and the soothing balm of healing. There is an escape. That was Martha.
The inescapable sorrow is is that which must be faced when a crippling defect in mind or body occurs---much like a stone which is thrown into a pond. The placid waters part to receive the stone and then flow back together as the stone sinks slowly to the bottom of the pond, there to remain, buried and deep. An inescapable sorrow must be accepted and made friends with, for there is no escape. Hello, Melissa mine!
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At five-thirty the following morning, as the wheels of the baby carts were squeaking eerily down the corridor, I made a quick decision. When the nurse handed me my baby to breast-fee, I asked for a bottle of formula.
Even so, i was consumed with grief while she lay so helplessly by my side. Each meal grew progressively worse. I could no longer find the small opening to her mouth with my eyes awash with tears and my breasts aching to be emptied.
The next morning I asked that they feed her in the nursery.
Still, I could not keep myself away. I tottered down the hall to the nursery and stood weakly by the large picture window while a young nurse cuddled Melissa in her arms. And it was a hurtful thing.
O God, You have placed in my hands a strange burden. I cannot see the size or the shape of it clearly just now, but I know You have tailored it to fit. For You made my frame and You must have remembered that I am no very strong. Help me not to forget what I have known about You for such a long time. Please help.
An uncontrollable trembling seized me from head to foot. I willed myself to be still. So still that I could hear the throbbing of my heart against my eardrums. I listened, straining. There was no voice from on high, no whisper in the winds,just a very matter-of-fact voice bursting against my senses.
“Come, you had better go back to your room now.”
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A few days later, I was discharged from the hospital. The sunshine was everywhere that morning as we said our shaky good-byes. My husband carried my suitcase and I held a potted yellow chrysanthemum in my hands. Down at the end of the long hospital corridor, our five-day-old daughter slept peacefully in the nursery. I could not trust myself to bid her good-bye.
What horrendous deed was I about to perform? What unnatural love was my mother heart spilling out that I could leave my baby behind for strangers to care for and walk out of the hospital empty-armed?
