07/31/2018
July 29, 2018
The Worst/Best day of my life.
Today, I got to experience what it’s like to have your child die.
Today I got the chance to know what it is like to experience a parents worst nightmare.
Today, and my forever tomorrows, I will know what it’s like to hold your child’s blue lifeless body to your chest.
Today, I know what true pain is.
Today, I got to experience how quickly life can change.
Today I know what it is really like to have a bad day.
I am not writing this, for sympathy or likes.
I am writing this, as maybe a way to cope with what happened, self soothe and heal.
My message is intended to prevent as many people as possible from, an experience like I and my wife have had today because yes , what happened to us today CAN happen to anyone.
Today, was not like most normal days,but today started off great. I had spent the last few days celebrating a friends bachelor party in New Orleans. This weekend was on the calendar for weeks and I had been looking forward to enjoying myself with the guys drinking it up and just getting away , and in fact I may have enjoyed myself too much. I spent the weekend doing adult things so much so that when I made it home all the energy I could muster was spent on flopping onto the couch.
My son however, was full of energy, like always! He must of pulled twenty toys out of his box and carried them to me to play with him with. And everyone of his attempts were denied , sure I made half ass attempts to cater to his needs but my attention was on the TV, and my feeble attempts at playing with him finally lost his interest and so he wondered off.
While all of this was going on, my wife was in and out of the house, on the phone, next door dealing with this and that, and when she walked through the front door, instead of going to the bedroom, which was her original plan, she walked into the kitchen to wash her hands, the sure luck of her needing to wash her hands, while not normally a big deal, for this particular story it is monumental.
While my wife was washing her hands , she noticed the back door open, and that is when I heard the scream that has changed the rest of my life,” MICHAEL, MATTHEW IS FLOATING IN THE POOl”!!!!!!
Hearing myself say the words as I type still gives me chills. My wife ran out the door and dived in a flash, no thought at all as to being fully dressed or anything else , I made it to the edge of the pool, shortly behind her , and that is when I got to see my beautiful baby boy, blue and lifeless.
My heart was pounding at this point and my mind was racing in a million different ways , all I could think to do was blow air into his mouth and flip him over and squeeze his little body. I do not know baby CPR.
Every time I would squeeze, it was like squeezing a sponge full of water, more and more water , how could he have so much in his body and ever come back to me was all I could think.
At this point, I didn’t even want to look at my baby, because at this point he is blue and lifeless , I dazed off looking at nothing at all. I literally at one point wanted to run, run where? , I have no clue, but I stayed and barked out orders to my wife who as you can imagine was in shock.
I told my wife to call 911 and she did; however, she wasn’t able to put two words together that made any sense and for the record neither could I other than ,” Oh my god he is dead “ I think at this point I might of been hoping for a neighbor to hear and help direct me into something productive.
So, out of nowhere my body picked up my limp child and I ran barefoot as fast as I could to the car, my wife in tow, still not knowing where we were heading.
I started the car, handed my son to her and told her to start giving him CPR, all while I drove our car through our quiet neighborhood maybe going up 90 MPH, It didn’t matter who was where ,I was passing them. I believe this is where maybe Jesus took the wheel, because at this point I still had no idea where I was going.
Still at this point, it was like my body was on auto-pilot, swerving in and out of cars , and my mind was focused on asking god for forgiveness for my ignorance and pleading with him to give me another shot at playing with my son , see at this very moment in a life and death situation, time isn’t the same as usual, a lot of things go through your mind, so much so, that I would liken it to stories of how people say that their life flashes before their eyes. I was driving, yet , I was imagining how the next week was going to play out without my child , I was assuming that my wife would want a divorce, and I was planning on killing myself because I wasn’t going to be able to live with the guilt the rest of my life as how the last thing my son new of his father was him laying on a couch and telling him to go play because I was hungover..... I mean could you? Could you stand the thought of one-second one of your babies is begging for your attention to play with them and all you do is send them off to their death?
Now, we know the exact time everything took for all of this to play out. We know that at 4 pm my son triggered the ADT alarm in the back yard, and we know that at 4:04 pm my wife called 911. We also know how long it took to get to the minor emergency clinic at 1960 and Westlake Houston (4 minutes) I tell you how long everything was because I want you to know how short a period of time it takes to change the rest of your life.
During our 4 minute car ride, I had to yell over my wife, who was screaming I hate you at the top of her lungs,
I just kept reminding her to keep giving him CPR, “ Just keep trying!!!!l“ I would yell at her when she would stop to say that her baby was dead.
Now, my son was potentially under water for anywhere from 1-4 minutes, we don’t know for sure yet, and then another 4 minutes without breathing on the way to the emergency room, but I am happy to tell you that seconds before we pulled into the emergency room, I told my wife to try one more time and she did , and that is when my son finally opened his beautiful eyes.
As I pulled into the emergency room , the place looked closed , I almost had a heart attack when I saw no cars in the parking lot , but I got out of our car and sprinted to the door barefoot on hot concrete and to my pleasant surprise there was a nurse at the front desk , and all I could manage to do was ask her to help and let her know my son had drowned.
The nurse helped my son and wife into the room and that is when the ladies there took over.
I am going to divert from the story a bit to help paint a picture, when my son was born, he cried more than any baby I think ever in the history of people having babies ,actually he didn’t cry, it was more of a high pitched scream than anything. My wife and I spent 7-8 long months praying for him to finally stop this sleep depriving stage, and I can actually remember telling Ashley , that is my wife’s name, but I told Ashley that I couldn’t wait until there was a point where I never had to hear that scream anymore; but I will tell you that scream my son let out after a couple of minutes in the emergency room, with those nurses was the sweetest sound I think I had ever heard in my life. After spending ten minutes looking at a child that you love with all of your heart lay there with no heart beat and not breathing a scream or a cough might as well be Mozart. That scream while not being proof that he was going to make it or not was just enough hope you need as a parent, to keep from passing out yourself.
See, as I type this Facebook post at 2:24 am at the Memorial Herman hospital , in the Ronald McDonald room for parents , I am happy to say that my son is alive and actually doing well. I left the room only to give my wife a chance to get poor Matt to sleep, they have so many tubes, wires and IV’s on him, that the boy actually seems pi**ed , which is a good thing , because my boy is very head strong and isn’t having it.
Anyways , back to the story, when the ambulance came to the minor emergency room to pick my son up , only one parent could ride and I was tasked with going back to our house, my brother had to drive at this point because I could do only one thing and that was cry, and when I say cry , it is the type of crying that actually borders on wailing .
So I was told by the police that I had to go back to allow detectives to go take pictures of what could potentially be a crime scene.
Let me tell you, if any of you parents are like us , there are toys everywhere, and when I stepped into our house , I still didn’t know if my son was going to make it or not , so just seeing his things there , you know the things that make a racket ,his favorite little truck, HIS things, things that potentially he may never get to touch again made me go into shock, I couldn’t even think of what to pack my wife , I let a female police officer go through all of my wife’s things to pack her bag because all I could do was cry. ( Thank you by the way officer, I didn’t catch her name)
But that hour or two that I sat there at my house with no news , I would describe as a hell, a hell I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I mean this is torture, here I am waiting for what seems like an eternity for a cop to show up and take pictures as evidence for what may or may not be a death or crime scene.
In that time I sat at the house wondering around aimlessly, looking at wet floors from where my wife and I came running through on our way out to the car, and other things like my son’s sippie cup with half drank apple juice , I realized that life doesn’t care about your plans, you may think it does , but I promise you, one day you will wake up just like any other day, and by the end of that same day, life is going to change all of everything you have planned.
I had plans before the accident, plans of going fishing this week and maybe going and playing poker and don’t forget work was on my mind , but none of that mattered anymore, the ONLY thing I cared about was getting to my baby, and finding out whether or not he would make it.
When I finally arrived at the hospital, still uncertain if I was going to walk up to my family and find out that my son had passed while I was gone , my thoughts were very clear at this point and that was if my son had made it , I was going to make serious changes. Changes in my life that would prevent me from ever having to experience what it was like to even contemplate what it would be like to pick out a baby casket or where I was going to bury him.
I know this may sound morbid , but on the way to the hospital we passed a cemetery, and I envisioned myself there later this week, burying my son, full funeral , and the thoughts came to my head of how I couldn’t stand letting him be out there all alone without me or his mom. How in the world would I be able to just let my two year baby be out there for years and years without me ?
So I am going to make changes in my life , do things that revolve around my children more. Quit being so worried about work all the time , I am not strong enough to make it in this world without my children, so I am going to do a 180 and make sure that I spend EVERY chance god gives me with my children.
I am NEVER going to ever take for granted a second I have with my son again, because I know that every second he is here by a pure miracle, a miracle that god has gifted me not once but twice now.
Now I have spent my life like a lot of you hearing about tragedies or reading about them on Facebook and always assuming that this couldn’t or wouldn’t happen to me , but TODAY opened my eyes, that I am not special in regards to the time we have on earth , and children are little for only a very short time and I need to spend as much time with mine as possible and you should too.
You should also take this as opportunity to make sure your children are safe, pools are very dangerous and I plan on letting as many people know as possible what can happen in a split second if you’re not careful .
If you have a pool , get a fence around it, get doors that can’t be opened by toddler hands and always watch your children. The doctor told Ashley and I that tonight alone there are three other families here with the exact same thing that happened to us happening to them, and it happens every day, so much so that they can’t even keep count.
I didn’t write this all out for your sympathy, or attention, I am not seeking anything other than awareness, if someone can read this and save just ONE baby then this will have been worth it.
Share our story, tell your neighbors, tell anyone with a pool to hire a consultant to safe proof the house . I promise you it will be worth it if you don’t have to go through what Ashley and I have had to today.
I started off this post , with the line,” My Worst /Best day, today was the worst day in my life because I had to hold my lifeless child and try to bring him back to life , but this was my BEST day ever because GOD gave me and my family another shot at spending a full life with my son.
To the nurses and doctors thank you! Today you saved not just my son’s life but mine and my wife’s as well.
( My grammar and spelling may need correcting , but don’t judge me on that, judge me on what I am trying to say and save your children)
