American Spirit

by Taya Kyle

  She decided she had to act on it. A blood type match was only the first hurdle; she volunteered for further tests.

  Truthfully, she didn’t think she’d be the right person. But her faith and instincts pushed her to find out.

  “I went in,” she remembers. “I was such a good match, the doctors thought the test was tainted.”

  More tests proved that she was perfect.

  Would she do it?

  Mona balked, wondering if others in her family might need a kidney in the future. But she kept coming back to the idea that she was the one meant to step forward.

  “I’m a coward,” she confesses now, laughing. “But I knew God was calling me to do this.”

  If He was, it wasn’t because of Mac’s religion—neither he nor his wife was Christian. But their beliefs weren’t important; Mona’s was. And so, she went to New York City to meet with them and the doctors.

  Mac’s surgeon played devil’s advocate, telling her not only of the dangers to her but of the fact that transplants might not work, that Mac might not live very long even with her new kidney. As the conversation went on, it sounded to her like the doctor was trying to talk her out of it.

  Mac, sitting nearby, certainly seemed to think so.

  “I looked over at Mac. Tears were running down his face,” she remembers. “I told the doctor, I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve never had a man refuse anything I’ve offered.”

  With a laugh, the doctor agreed to go ahead with the operation.

  There was one more complication—the night before the operation, the hotel she was staying at had a fire. Mona and her daughter had to evacuate in their PJs. The emergency left them in the street for hours.

  When they didn’t show up at the hospital at the appointed time that morning, Mac’s wife called the hotel. The clerk told her they had checked out.

  Moments later, Mona walked into the ward—still dressed in her pajamas.

  Whew.

  The surgery went well—for Mac. Mona’s recovery was more arduous than she’d thought it would be—a fact she hadn’t quite prepared for, having studiously avoided the information the hospital had sent her.

  But it worked out. Mona recovered, and Mac thrived, thanks to Mona’s kidney—“Little Monie,” as he called it.

  For sixteen years, a record at the time, Little Monie kept him going. Then another disease took its toll; his transplanted kidney began to fail. Mac luckily found another donor—a man Mona knows only as “Eddie”—whose kidney not only helped Mac but kick-started Mona’s donated one as well. Today, Mac lives with two donated kidneys: Little Monie and Big Eddie.

  His wife passed away a year or so ago, depriving Mona of a strong friendship that had developed over the years. But the experience has left her more committed to life and her faith.

  “I feel honored to have saved someone’s life,” she says. “I just know this was my purpose. Being a Christian, we’re supposed to be there for someone. This is extreme, but how often can you save someone’s life?”

  If that’s what you’re called to do, how can you refuse?

  Today, there are various mechanisms to arrange to donate your organs after death. Some states even allow you to do it through the auto licensing procedures; check a box, and you’re done. The federal government even offers information at www.organdonor.gov.

  Checking a box. It doesn’t seem like that big a deal, and yet . . . how many of us can say we saved a life?

  Four

  Moving Past Grief

  Beyond Our Burdens

  Some people seem blessed with a special bliss, destined by God and Fate to glide through life without a blemish or hiccup. They appear privileged to barely know obstacles, to have tragedy be a complete stranger. From a distance, their lives seem an uninterrupted journey of reward, pleasure, and tranquility.

  Up close, I’m sure things are very different.

  Other people have lives that seem like that not only from a distance but to them as well. I’m not sure they’re paying attention, but I’m happy for them nonetheless.

  Then there are the rest of us. Every day we face burdens big and small. We see them, feel them, and somehow manage to go on. We stumble, we fall, and somehow we get back to our feet and push on. Most of the things standing in our way are mere annoyances, some random act of inefficiency that gets us off-track—the traffic jam that makes us late for the kids’ dismissal, the lost mail that delays the credit card payment. Under the right circumstances, we may not even notice them or their effect.

  But sooner or later, these burdens accumulate and weigh us down. They sap our time and energy, making life seem as if it’s an uphill slog.

  And then, tragedy strikes.

  When my husband, Chris, was murdered, I felt as if my soul as well as my body had been pulverized. My despair was so deep that I wished God had taken me as well. And perhaps the only thing that kept me from joining him in heaven was the knowledge that my two children needed me more than ever. They were my only reason for living; thinking of them was the only way I could get out of bed in the morning—and honestly, there were many mornings when, after somehow getting them off to school after only an hour or two of sleep, I retreated back to bed.

  I wish I could claim that my experience of that despair provided me with great insights into survival. I wish it had given me a magic formula that I could share with others that would cut short their suffering. If I could say that my great tragedy enabled others to avoid or at least shorten their own despair, surely my grief would be justified.

  But no magic formula revealed itself to me. No words of wisdom made it possible to fill the void. Every day was a struggle. Many things and people helped: Family. Friends. Grief counseling. Prayer. Color therapy.

  Normal things—exercise.

  Extraordinary things—the massive outpouring of sympathy from strangers who were touched by Chris, either in person or through the book, the movie, or the stories about him.

  Each helped in some small way, but none were a magic formula for expelling pain.

  But I got through. And I learned this: in the worst of times, if we can survive another day, that’s enough. If we can do even a small healthy thing to heal, even better.

  I outlined the path I took in American Wife, so I won’t overshare again here. What’s important is that the path was my own. Even the detours were of use in some way or another. Looking back, I know there was progress each day, even if at the time I thought I was sliding back. Because sometimes stopping and resting is just as important as pushing for progress.

  One of the key events in my road back from the deep pit of grief was participating in the Patriot Tour with Marcus Luttrell, something Chris had committed to prior to his murder. Marcus and the others were enormously kind, telling me I didn’t have to join them, or if I wanted, I could appear without making a speech. But that just didn’t feel right. It seemed to me that the right thing to do was to honor Chris’s commitment—that was what our marriage had always been about. When he was alive, he would back me up and I would back him up. Wasn’t this the same thing?

  Now, to that point, giving speeches wasn’t my thing. I don’t consider myself shy, exactly, but I would have understood if the organizers said something like, No offense, Mrs. Kyle, but we’re going to have several thousand people and, well, speeches are for the professionals.

  But they didn’t. Maybe they just couldn’t turn down a widow. In any event, I went and gave the speech.

  Chris was with me that day. He wasn’t a polished speaker himself—he’d started talking to groups only after the book came out, and even then most of his remarks were brief and off the cuff. But they were always, always from the heart.

  I remembered that and took it as my example. I could certainly speak from the heart.

  And I could speak about Chris, who then as always weighed heavily on it.

  So, I did. I talked about his spirit and how we need heroes in everyday life—something he truly believed. I talked about
how our veterans are among the country’s greatest asset, how they give our country a blank check, and how we should honor them by doing our own bit for the nation. It was about patriotism and community—values dear to Chris’s heart and dear to our family.

  Maybe my first talks weren’t the greatest ever. Definitely they weren’t. But by the end of the first night, I realized that my words and Chris’s spirit had moved the crowd. It wasn’t me. It was the message—resilience, good and evil, the need to pay forward acts of kindness, the value of life and love. The words resonated with the people there because they, too, believed in those values.

  Their strength jump-started me. I was able to push on, push myself, and then share that message with others. I can’t say that I made it past grief, repaired all the damage that had been done, or even filled the vast hole Chris’s murder left in my heart. But by learning to share, I learned to move with my loss.

  Some of these stories are also stories of grief and loss. But they’re also very positive. I can’t call them happy stories—loss is loss, and I know for myself I would gladly trade anything and everything I’ve done since Chris’s death to have one more day with him, even a single moment.

  Yet these stories of survival inspire me like few others.

  Finding Meaning in Loss

  Lorraine Ash

  Late May 1999.

  The new millennium was ahead, and the future was bright for journalist and editor Lorraine Ash. The head of the features department at an important daily newspaper in New Jersey, Lorraine was a successful professional with a long list of achievements. She had a strong marriage to her husband, Bill, who supported and encouraged her career. She also had deep roots in the community where she lived and worked.

  And, at forty years old, she was nine months pregnant, eagerly waiting to give birth to her first child.

  Lorraine and Bill had picked out her names. Her first would be Victoria, a tribute to several of Lorraine’s family members. Her middle name, Helen, would honor Bill’s side of the family. Bill had a pet name for her: “Sweetlet.”

  They had everything: a room, a crib, toys, and, most important, dreams. They mused with friends and family on her possible future—a romance writer? A celebrity fit to visit Buckingham Palace for high tea with the Queen?

  Lorraine was deep into planning how to juggle the demanding dual roles of manager and mom. Everything was ready, but little Sweetlet was taking her time. Lorraine would visit the room they had set up as a nursery, imagining her daughter’s future, dream-living her family’s coming years, and thinking encouraging thoughts in hopes of speeding the baby along.

  Finally, about two weeks past her due date, Lorraine’s labor pains began. It was a Tuesday, early June. The pains were still a bit irregular, but there was no mistaking what they were—every mother knows, even the first time.

  Mom-to-Be made her way to the doctor’s office with her husband, excited, of course, but logical, determined, completely in control . . . at least to the extent that such things can be controlled. The office was only a short distance from their home and the hospital. The plan was simple: get the checkup, then ride across the street to the delivery ward and their new future.

  The doctor asked how she felt.

  Fine, she replied.

  Then, in casual aside, Lorraine mentioned that she hadn’t felt the baby move recently.

  No?

  No.

  Are you sure?

  . . .

  Slowly but inexorably, the world around Lorraine and her husband began to change. The obstetrician put her on the examining table, began a Doppler exam, listened for a heartbeat.

  He didn’t hear one.

  He spoke softly, calm but urgent. It was too soon to jump to conclusions. His equipment there was not as powerful as the hospital’s. There were so many variables, so many possibilities. . . .

  A deep quiet settled around the expectant mother and father as they made their way to the hospital. Life now moved in excruciatingly slow motion. Sensations stung, digging deep into memory—a cold floor, cold instruments, cold air.

  Grief had already begun to stalk them. Birth became death. Lorraine knew before she heard the words from the doctor. Victoria had died in her womb.

  Where there is life, there must also be death, but I know of exactly no one comforted by that simple and cold logic. And in this day of advanced medical care, wonderous drugs, and encyclopedic knowledge about nearly every topic, it is understandable if we are stunned by simple, cold statistics: each year some twenty-four thousand babies die before they are born. That represents roughly 1 percent of all pregnancies.

  Stillbirths—the medical term for a birth that ends after twenty weeks of gestation—occur for a variety of reasons. Most common are birth defects, problems with the placenta or umbilical cord, and of course the mother’s health. Miscarriages—defined as a pregnancy that ends before twenty weeks—are even more common. While statistics are elusive, some estimates go as high as 25 percent.

  And yet, both events were rarely spoken of for decades. Yes, doctors and other medical professionals might warn mothers about proper nutrition and exercise and give them a list of dos and don’ts, but for the most part, that was as far as it went.

  Lately, that has begun to change. While the topics are still uncomfortable for many, there is now more information available both on the web and from hospitals, clinics, and doctors. There are counseling services and peer groups devoted to preterm loss of babies. The grief of mothers and fathers who lose children before or at birth is now recognized; with that recognition has come new methods of healing.

  Lorraine is a big part of the reason.

  Lorraine and Bill’s baby had died after an infection caused Victoria to have a bowel movement; her amniotic fluid had become contaminated, in effect poisoning her.

  “It wasn’t that anything had gone wrong, which is the insidious part of it,” says Lorraine now. The infection had come from a type of strep, called Group B, that is extremely common among women of childbearing age; many live life with it, and it has no effect. Except in pregnancy.

  Mothers-to-be were routinely tested at thirty-seven weeks when Lorraine was expecting. She went through the test and “passed”—meaning no infection was found. But for various reasons, Group B strep infections can occur later on, after the test but before birth. At the time (and even now in many places), medical protocols did not require additional checking.

  Detected, the disease is relatively straight-forward to deal with, though anything that threatens life at an early stage can be treacherous. Undetected, it can be deadly for both mother and child.

  Lorraine subsequently caught the disease herself, and besides the pain of both grief and a C-section, she spent the days after Victoria’s death struggling to recover. Pain, grief—it was overwhelming.

  And yet, she didn’t give in to despair. Somehow, she found the strength to struggle and claw back. Trained as a journalist, she began recording details and random thoughts in a rough and informal journal.

  It was not an easy path. There were reverses, stalls. Some of those closest to her had a hard time accepting the loss and an even harder time talking about it. The stress and pain didn’t stop there. Lorraine and Bill experienced and expressed their grief in different ways. Ultimately, their marriage became stronger, but surely both would have traded anything, even their own lives, for a healthy birth.

  It’s not surprising that Lorraine explored spiritual possibilities across a variety of teachings, but she did so with a broad and open mind, as much a student as a believer. Her Catholic upbringing was important, but more as a ladder or even a springboard. From Rabbi Harold Kushner (When Bad Things Happen to Good People) to Jesuit theologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to Buddhists to New Age philosophers, Lorraine investigated and considered a wide range of spiritual thoughts and perspectives.

  “I remember being in a Buddhist temple, with an old Vietnamese monk and a translator,” she says, “and asking him, ‘Wha
t does this mean in your tradition?’”

  She wanted every perspective she could get. One constant: she realized that spirituality must be a positive force, not a negative. Her baby’s death was not a punishment from God for something she or Bill had done.

  By Christmas, Lorraine had begun to rearrange her mental life. She readjusted her perspective on her personal tragedy as well; she was able to accept the kindness of others, something that had been impossible in the immediate shadow of Victoria’s passing.

  Most important, the writer wrote. Despite returning to her full-time job at the newspaper, she felt compelled to tell Victoria’s story as well, on her own time and in her own way. It was a story that she realized could be told only in first-person, with the pronoun I rather than her or them.

  She had to go inside herself and speak from that center, rather than being a mere observer. This was something she had always told herself she would never do: journalists write from the outside, always; they don’t want to infect the narrative with their own opinions and feelings.

  But here those opinions and feelings were the biggest part of the story.

  Lorraine transformed her journal and ongoing experiences into a wonderful and eloquent book entitled Life Touches Life: A Mother’s Story of Stillbirth and Healing. She takes readers through the painful and difficult experience of grief, acceptance, and the first hopeful signs of peace.

  “The act of writing helped me make sense of it,” she says now. “You want to come to some sort of understanding, and writing helps.”

  When she was finished, she made an amazing if depressing discovery: no one wanted to publish it.

  Not because it wasn’t well-written. On the contrary, she received many compliments. It was the subject. Even in the early days of the twenty-first century, people simply didn’t talk about stillbirths or miscarriages. Certainly not as openly and candidly as she did in the book.