Thoughts.com Blogs - MY DAUGHTER STEPHANIE.....CHILD # 4

This is mother's day weekend and i thought what a nice time to introduce you all to the reasons i get celebrated as a 'mom'........MY KIDS! i'm going to do this in installments.....first up:
     STEPHANIE KATHLEEN: my youngest child born on St Patrick's Day.....ergo the irish name...... :) she was 3 weeks late.....yup, you heard it here first......i thought i was giving birth to an elephant. i guess she was so comfortable and content in me she wasn't interested in seeing the world.
She finally showed up after 30 hrs of labor. someone told me once that labor was the worst pain imagineable but the easiest to forget and they were right. during that 30 hrs i thought i was going to die from pain and sheer exaustion. i had nothing left to give this child but my last breath. she weighed in at 8 lb. even. she was the most beautiful baby i had ever seen . she had black hair and the bluest eyes (and still has those baby blues). and yes, i did forget the long hours of pain. :)
Stephanie was and is the type of person you admire and respect as soon as you meet her. she demands respect simply by the way she carries herself and the way she is. during her HS years while other girls were getting teased and talked to crudely she would simply have to give a guy 'the look' and he would desolve into shame and apologies. she had as many guy friends as she did gal friends.
Steph was into softball. she would have been good at anything i think but softball was 'her sport' and she excelled in it so much. she was the ultimate catcher and made plays you would expect to see in the pro games. i was in total awe of her when she played and would sit there and think 'how the hell did she do that?'. i remember the year there was no one to manage and coach the team and she approached me. hell, i didn't know that much in the way of doing that but she talked me into it somehow. she was chosen to be in the all stars again that year and play for the state. i was chosen to manage that team.....me!!! we won.....we kicked ass that year.....it was great. during HS she played for junior and varsity teams along with seniors that weren't half as good. she amazed many of us those years.
She met her husband during her senior year and they were friends for a long time bc he actually had a crush on her bf. he saw that stephanie was the real catch and after months of dating fell in love. they married two yrs after she graduated.
They bought their first home in West Va and it was a beautiful house. she began working at the local hospital. life was sweet for them.
One weekend we all got together at my oldest daughter's house for a birthday celebration for the spouse. it was just food and mild drinking but it was fun none the less. after spouse and i left the 'kids' decided to drink a little more. stephanie didn't drink bc she was the designated driver for her and her husband. it had been a long day and she was tired and had a long way to drive. they left the house and started out on their drive back to W. Va and on the highway steph fell asleep at the wheel. her vehicle jumped the median strip, went in between the 'bridge' that was separating the roads and dropped 160 ft onto a railroad track below. she took part of a tree on the way down. thank god an emt had been driving and saw the accident and help was immediate in getting there.
Her husband had a broken back and was paralyzed. Steph came away hurting but they said she was fine......she wasn't. she had broken her tail bone. this girl during the next few months while her hubby was healing worked a full time job, visited hubby in hospital everyday and took care of the house. after hubby was finally able to walk again and came home she continued to work, would come home during her lunch hour and care for him,go back to work, come home at 4;30 take him to therapy every day but sundays, cook him dinner, help him to bathe and get ready for bed, take care of the house and pay bills and then would get up the next day to repeat the same thing. this went on for many months. she wouldn't take any help bc she felt she did this terrible thing.....no one felt that at all. no one....we found out months later she had a broken tail bone and had been a great deal of pain the entire time. she still has a lot of pain bc it wasn't dealt with at the time of the accident.
Steph had two children......courtney and scottie.......Courtney is the brightest of children and gorgeous. Scottie was not as fortunate.....he was born very ill. the doctors finally found a tumor in his left temperal lobe and began treating it. Again steph was thrust into taking care of someone she loved very much. they had moved up here by this time (and actually live right around the corner from me now). every week it was doctors, needles, blood, tests, meds, driving the 2 hrs to and from for scottie. in   2007 the word came down that scottie was terminal. nothing could be done for this beautiful, delightful, full of life little boy who had just reached his 5th birthday. (i have his picture on my photos.)
   I saw stephanie in a light that to this day just makes me so proud that she is my child and i gave birth to this exceptional human being. she ended up administering meds and injections and knowing the medical terms and jargon the drs. would talk about. she could carry on a conversation with the best of the best in the medical world. her life was her child. that life ended on Thursday August 29, 2007 at 7:42 pm when scottie drew in a breath and never took another one. i saw my daughter fall to pieces right before my eyes that night. her life flashed before me as i watched her heave in tears trying to breath for her child and herself. i thought she would never smile again, laugh again, speak again without crying. i thought she would die that night of a broken heart. i never but never want to see another child of mine or anyone else's go through that type of pain for as long as i live. it sends you to the depths of a hell that you don't want to experience ever.
It's been 8 months since that dark night. Steph had found out that when you have another child that life must go on. she is having a difficult time this weekend bc it's Mother's Day and bc Scottie's birthday is coming up this month. she is trying to be the person she knows she can be and the woman she needs to be. i pray for her every day that life gets better for her and her pain lessens as the days go by. she loved my post btw of scottie's ride. she said it made her feel better knowing he is up there riding a unicorn in the garden of heavenly beings. she knows my dad is up there helping him and loving him til she can be there for him again.
There is so much more i could tell you about this incredible young woman. she is an icon in my life and a hero to many. she is one of the strongest women i have ever had the privlege and honor to meet. i put her high in my book of amazing people in my life for sure. i used to think of the spouse and would wonder what i did in my life that was so terrible god would let me endure the beatings and torture of this man. now, thinking of my daughter stephanie i wonder what in my life i did that was so wonderful that God would give me this extraordinary exciting incredible child and allow me to be able to help shape her into the woman she is today........must have been something good. :)
karen