My Littlest Hero

“My Littlest Hero”
by Steve Stowe
June 2007

It has been amusing over the years to see how the meaning of any particular word will drastically change. Take the word “Hero” for example. In my 47 years of existence in this life, it has been very apparent that some greater power has exposed me to many Heroes. Not unlike a great percentage of our culture, my spiritual awareness has remained a bit impoverished by hideous extremism. Dr. King will always be a person to be embraced as a hero. Dr. King himself questioned the spiritual imbalance of today’s society when he said something to the effect that “we now have guided missiles and misguided men.”

My Mother taught me the proverb; if you don’t have anything nice to say, then say nothing at all. Later in my life I was blessed with a spiritual guide that taught me that “You can’t think your way into spiritual living, you must live your way into spiritual thinking.” Because of these powerful heroes and their teachings, I feel that I have had much more than my share of spirit powered help.

An amazing thing happened in October of 2006. Kathy, who by the way is my soul mate and partner for life, was granted with grandson number four. His mother raced Jared Nicholas to our home for a visit the moment they were discharged from the hospital. He had to be the most peaceful and content newborn child that I had ever witnessed. After the visit it seemed extremely eerie to watch Kathy struggle with letting the little guy leave our home with his mommy.

Six weeks later Kathy got a phone call from her frantic daughter who was pleading for advice. She had come home from work to find Jared in a state of physical suffering. She rushed the baby to a local hospital where he was air lifted to MCV in Richmond. Jared was fighting for his life that night because he had been violently abused and had received very serious brain damage. He held on courageously while a team of physicians began a series of life threatening procedures. An extensive amount of blood had to be discharged from Jared’s brain while he lay in a coma induced state. When I first saw him, I can’t describe the enormous pressure that began to puncture my chest. I closed my eyes and quickly asked God to allow Jared and me to trade places. Carl Jung once said that neurosis is the avoidance of legitimate suffering. Remembering this wise statement, I fought off physical and emotional pain in order to stay standing on my own two feet.

I couldn’t seem to find anything legitimate about what I was witnessing. I traveled to MCV a few days later to visit my little hero. The nurse asked me if I wanted to hold him. Of course I answered. After a few short prayers and tears he began to struggle frantically. The room filled with staff members who pushed me out of the way and started treating his little body like a punching bag. He was in respiratory arrest. They inserted a ventilator which would become his life line for some time to come.

Unlike me, whenever Kathy was in his presence, his spirit seemed to transform to hope and calmness. She would soon choose to stay with Jared night and day for the most part of the next five weeks. We finally met that grueling day when the staff of specialists explained his grim prognosis to the family. The chances were that Jared would remain on his back, in some institution, for the rest of his life. SBS is too new for neurologists to determine a specific outcome. The word they kept repeating was GRIM.

It is way too late to make a long story short, but Jared now lives with Kathy and me in our home. He is the happiest baby that we have ever witnessed. His physical and occupational therapy is going very well. He has passed all the tests in order to be rid of his tracheotomy and feeding tube. I always refrained from kissing my small children on the mouth, boundaries I suppose, but Jared insists on kissing us dead in the mouth about a hundred times a day while smiling like he has just won the lottery.

We have been blessed with a new hero. He is only nine months old, but without a voice yet to speak, He has become what I now know to be a hero. Never give up, never stop praying, and never believe for a minute that anyone understands what normal is. Forrest Gump’s Mother said to him, “If every child had leg braces, then every child would be normal.” Kathy and I thank all of our friends and family for their commitment to prayer. For that power is what delivered to our home, Our Littlest Hero, Jared Nicholas.

Steve Stowe
President
Shaken Baby Syndrome of Virginia, Inc.