Antonio

Antonio was strong and solid, he made his living with his hands. He worked ten hour days in order to support his family of four, and was completely dedicated to giving his children a life where they would want for nothing. A father of two, a husband to one, and in one night, suddenly a childless widower.

I met Antonio the day after his son was brought up to the ICU, his back to the window in the parent locker rooms. He was quietly sobbing and fingering a string of prayer beads. I was just dressed and out of the shower, my hair still in a towel, and had my wallet between my teeth so that I didn't accidentally pack it away in the locker again. I went and said hello and asked him if the Liason had been around to show him the in's and out's of the ICU area. We got a cup of coffee and sat down at the table, and he proceeded to tell me everything.

Antonio's wife, Marlena, took her son to soccer practice twice a week. Afterwards they would go to her mothers house so the children could visit their abuelita. One evening on the way home, a flash flood hit highway 400. The storm was so swift, the roads so slick that Marlena lost control of the van, overturning it into a ditch that was filled with water. Their four year old daughter was killed on impact. Bradford, Antonio's son, completely aspirated the water, drowning and losing oxygen for three minutes. The paramedics were able to revive him long enough to put him on Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) at Egleston. Marlena died on the ambulance ride, and Antonio was left with nothing except for the hope that his son would make it out and to his next soccer game. His parents would come sit with him for a time, but were also getting arangements made for his wife and daughters burial. Antonio missed their funeral to be with his son.

For five days, I sat with Antonio whenever I saw him. He would pace around the hospital to the gift shop and back up to the PICU, buying random trinkets and picking up prayer cards from the chapel to tape around his sons bed. Antonio used his hands to lift his son while the nurses were bathing him. During my time with him, I handed him my clinging cross, a simple wooden cross made for the palm of the hand.

One day, on my way down to the parking lot, Antonio found me and placed the clinging cross back into my palm. He told me that they were taking his son off of ECMO for better or for worse, and that he didn't think God could help him now. He turned around and left, and I cried for him, and for the knowledge that not everything is healed through faith. I then prayed my last prayer, asking God to give this man strength and to hopefully make it through this alive, to continue his path. What I did not acknowledge then, was that was the beginning of the end of my relationship with God.

That same day, around five o'clock, I heard a banshee's moan and the crash of IV poles into glass. Antonio's son had died.