InsaneJournal

Current mood:

drained

[Amy Kathleen] January 23, 1998 - May 10, 1998
So, if you know me, you might have heard about this. If you've just met me, this is something that's a part of me. It comes up now and again, mostly because two weeks in January and two weeks in May I get really... antsy. On edge.

I'm kind of a wreck. It started Ten Years Ago...

My daughter died.

A lot of people on my friends list know that I had a daughter and that she died and hey, since the move to IJ, there are some people who DON'T know. Consider this your initiation. I'm going to tell all of you what happened on that day. Stop now if you're not prepared to know far more about me than you ever dreamed of.

Mother's Day, 1998. May 10. Was living in Hawaii with my Naval Husband, my 21-month old son and my 3-month old daughter. We had a great house out in Ewa Beach and life was Just Fantastic. More or less. Ish. You know, except where I'd caught him fucking my friend Jennifer a few days before, but whatever. That's not what this story is about, unless it is. It might be, I don't know. We'll get to that.

Anyway, I woke up, the sky was gorgeous, life was grand and you know, Hawaii in May! Mother's Day. Got breakfast in bed, a cute little figurine. I called my mom in Seattle, wished her happy day, and Frank went to mow the lawn. While I laid with the baby in the bed. He came back in and we argued a little about going to the beach. He took the baby back to lay down in her crib. I could hear her fussing and I asked him to bring her to me but he didn't and after a minute, she stopped fussing.

He came back into the room and we talked about the beach, briefly. Then he said he wanted to have sex. I didn't want to have sex. We had sex. After, he said we'd go to the beach and he left to get the kids ready. I got up and waited a minute before following him out of the room. I checked on Kyle in the front room and walked back down the hallway to the bedrooms and he walked out holding the baby and I could tell by the way her arms were out to the side that something was really wrong. He couldn't talk, just kind of stammered, saying he didn't know-

I took her from him and went into the bedroom and she wasn't breathing and was slightly cool to the touch and I started to panic. He did CPR while I called 911. I got disconnected the first time and the operator said it was because I was hysterical. I wasn't. I said I needed an ambulance, that my infant wasn't breathing, my address... and they transferred the phone call to Barbers Point Naval Air Station who sent an ambulance. I'll never forget talking to that woman. She prayed with me on the phone and cried.

The medics asked if I was going to ride in the ambulance with them, but I couldn't ride in the back, so I sat up front and I remember the driver being angry that during the whole seven minutes that it took for him to drive from Iroquois Point to St. Francis in traffic (on a Sunday), he swore because no one would move for the sirens. He drove in the median. I was grateful. And when we got there, they asked me questions I couldn't answer: Name, address, phone number. It was all a distraction so they could hook my daughter up to wires and put a tube down her throat.

HE had stayed behind. I guess he'd needed oxygen at the house before my FRIEND Jennifer had driven him to the hospital.

Anyway, while I was waiting for him to get there, they'd pulled up a chair for me to sit on while they worked on her. I was able to curl one arm around her feet and one kind of around her head. The doctor kind of paced back and forth giving orders. You know, a shot here, breathing with the bag there, but other than that, it wasn't like on TV. It was calm. He put his hand on my shoulder and said they'd work on her until my husband got there.

And I looked at him and I said, "She's not going to be okay, is she?" And he shook his head slowly and very quietly and calmly, said to me, "No, she's not." And I will forever be grateful to that man for not fucking around with me. And I sat there and watched them do that for another three minutes until he got there and then they stopped and wrapped her in a heated sheet so I could hold her and they took us to a conference room.

And at that point, I had to call my mother on Mother's Day and tell her that the granddaughter I had named after her had died.

That, folks, is the worst thing I've ever done to another person. The noise she made freaked me out so bad I dropped the phone. And she never remembered saying it but she asked me what HE did to her.

We left the hospital three hours later only to find our house roped off with yellow caution tape. Navy guys with machine guns standing around telling me that it was a crime scene. The SIDS Advocate was there and the police were there and it wasn't until 10:30pm that we were allowed back in our house. They'd gone through everything and taken what they wanted.

The Navy handled the arrangements and I let them, except the plane. They wanted us to fly Delta, non-stop from Honolulu to Atlanta and then back to Seattle. I refused. We flew Northwest. Every person working on that plane knew why we were there and that my baby girl was in the refrigerator underneath. And ever since my dad, I'd known about the jumpseat, so that's where I sat for six hours, alone, with the alcohol they gave me.

We spent a month in Washington. I saw a baby in Fred Meyer that was wearing the same outfit as my daughter had on and lost it. They buried her in the one outfit my mom had saved from my own infant hood. And my sister won't remember it, but she held me one night while I cried and I'd never felt closer to her.

The autopsy came back and I read every word. Official cause of death: Unknown, symptoms consistent with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. We were done, right?

Wrong.

April the following year, my husband walked out to live with his girlfriend and her husband. Two days later, my mom was diagnosed with cancer. Two days after THAT, my mom bought tickets for myself, my son and my sister to fly from Hawaii to Seattle and we left four days later.

Two weeks after that? My Navy Husband confessed to my daughter's death. What he said was that he was guilty of "holding her down by the back of her neck until she stopped struggling".

We had trial and chemo and everything else all jammed into another hell year. He was convicted of 2nd degree murder. He got 27 years and pled to 19. Federal sentences are automatically reduced by 1/3. He'll be out when Kyle's 15. And since he always said he'd kill me, too? It'll be time to go.


And you thought you knew drama.