#13: Letter to My Granddaughter: The Night Heather Nearly Died

Dear Granddaughter,

The last time we talked, you told me that sometimes you ask your head if you believe in God—then answer yourself “no.” Sometimes you ask and you tell yourself “yes.” You try to see how you feel about each answer. I told you I’d have to tell you some of my stories about miracles and angels. 

But first, I’d like to start by telling you this is a good question to ask, and I remember doing this a lot when I was your age, and many times while growing up. “Head,” I’d say to myself, “Do you believe in God? Do you really believe in God?” And then I’d say “no,” just to see what that felt like. What is it like to not believe in God? I remember even threatening God. 

I was very skinny when I was eleven, and our soccer shorts were so baggy that my scrawny legs looked like toothpicks sticking out the bottom of my big, blue shorts. Worse, the shorts were so enormous that if I moved wrong my underwear showed. The other mothers “pegged” these ridiculous shorts to make them tighter, so my friends’ privates weren’t exposed. My mother wouldn’t. Which left me the only girl with “see-it-all” shorts and feeling embarrassed by my oh-so-skinny legs. Every other afternoon at school we had to play soccer. My friends and I changed in the bathroom stalls. How I hated sticking my skinny legs through the elastic waistband and pulling up those huge, hated shorts. Each time I begged God to make my legs fat. I knew He could do it. I had no doubt. And this was going to be a great miracle, no less than Jesus healing a leper or making a lame man walk. So I’d pull up my shorts and look down. Skinny as ever.

Day after day I begged. Day after day my legs stayed skinny. I had to leave the bathroom ashamed of myself, looking like a stick girl in balloon shorts. I wished I could die. One day I got desperate. “If you don’t make my legs fat!” I told God, “then I won’t believe in you anymore!” Trouble was, I knew that if I threatened God, it meant I believed in Him. You don’t threaten someone not there, do you?

This is when I slowly began to learn that believing in God—or not—isn’t so simple as asking the question in my head. It’s a question you have to ask your heart. Where you feel things, not think things. 

I want to tell you how I first came to feel God, not just think about Him. I was six-and-a-half years old, younger than you. The month was December, many years ago. I actually have many stories I can tell, and will if you’re interested, but this one I’ll call “The Night Heather Nearly Died.” First, though, we have to start the day she was born. It was December, remember, and it was cold. I woke up in the dark, before sunup. My father had just ruffled my hair and was standing in the starlight coming through the window. “You wanted me to wake you…” 

I sat up, sleepy but excited.

“You’re going to the hospital with Mummy?” I asked. 

 “Yes. Auntie Grace and Joan are here.” 

Auntie Grace was my mother’s aunt. She liked to tell us stories from Scotland, where she was born, and my sisters and I—Linda, Brenda, and Tresa, me in the middle—liked to her speak in the old Scottish brogue, especially when she recited Bobby Burns, my second favorite poet, or Robert Louis Stevenson, my favorite. Joan was our boarder. She taught Grade Two at Viscount Elementary two miles from our house and she lived with us. It was her rent money that bought our eggs and eventually a piano.

I said, “It’ll be a girl.”

“We’ll see.”

He tucked me back into my cozy, warm covers, Tinsy Winsy and Laura Lee (my sock monkey and baby doll) tucked in too; and I drifted back to sleep. I didn’t know as I fell into sleep that my whole life was about to change. Not in big ways. No, I’d still go to my same school, I’d still have my same friends. But my life was about to change in such small ways I wouldn’t notice for a long time. You see, Heather (this was her name) was born to die. She lived only three-and-a-half years, a little gift from heaven, but she brought with her, for me to see, miracles. And these miracles, each time they happened, made my heart grow more and more aware of God—to the point that even when He didn’t do something I wanted, like give me fat legs, I still believed in Him. I couldn’t help it.

Heather was born with an enormous hole in her heart—a pretty complicated and important part of your body to be so damaged. I will give you a quick lesson to help you understand. The heart is a crazy maze, but it’s divided into two basic halves with a wall between. The halves are called ventricles. One ventricle has blood without oxygen; the other with. Half our heart, then, is full of used-up blood, we’ll call it blue blood, and not much use. The other is red, full of oxygen, and from this ventricle it gets pumped, thumpity-thump, to our ears and toes and everywhere in between. Heather was born with such a big hole between these two ventricles that she hardly had a wall at all. So what happens where there is no wall between the two pieces? The blue and red blood gets all sloshed together and watered down. No one can survive very long like this because we all have to have oxygen, and we have to have lots of it. Think about when you run. The longer you run and the faster you run your heart begins to beat harder and faster, too, right? And then you start breathing fast. Pretty soon you’re panting. Then you’re gasping, sucking in the air. Why? Because your heart needs to get oxygen quickly to your muscles so you can keep running. For Heather, life became all about getting enough oxygen. 

So many miracles happened right there in the hospital, right there at the start of her short life, and many more along the way. Being only six and stuck at home, I never saw them. Just heard of them. But no one had to tell me they were miracles; this was obvious. Here’s the first. My mother and father, your great-grandparents, were getting her dressed to bring her home. They had no idea she was so sick. And apparently she looked just like me and I was anxious to see her. My Uncle Stan was there too. He was learning to be a doctor and had come by my mother’s hospital room to say goodbye, and probably make fun of my father for now having four girls. No boys. I was actually pretty happy about that. The only boys I knew were at school and they were unpleasant. All of a sudden Heather turned blue. Uncle Stan, being an almost-doctor, saved her life. So this was the first miracle: my uncle being there, my uncle knowing exactly what to do. But it was also bad news. This is when they figured out her heart was not properly formed. My mother came home crying. And I didn’t get to see Heather. Not for a long time. 

She was ten days old when she had her first heart surgery. Dr. Shaw, her surgeon, didn’t think she would live. But she did, another miracle. She had to remain, though, in the hospital. Her heart had to pump way too hard to get the oxygen she needed. Thumpity-thump, thumpity-thump. Thump-thump. The slightest alarm, even crying, would be too hard on her banging heart and she’d die. 

To help her get more oxygen and ease her heart a bit, Dr. Shaw put her in an oxygen tent. They have better ways to give people oxygen now, but back then all they had were plastic sheets to drape like a tent over peoples’ beds. Then they pumped oxygen into the tent. Here Heather lived for weeks. My mother and father told us right away she’d probably die, that Dr. Shaw warned her that Heather might never learn to speak, to sit up, certainly never to walk—because she might not be able to get enough oxygen for her brain to properly grow. None of these things happened, so you can see that little miracles began, helping her grow. For she did learn to talk, to sit up, even to walk—if we held her hands.

She was one-and-a-half when I first remember her coming home. She’d just had her second heart surgery and was so weak no one believed she’d make it. I remember the day well. I was coloring in our bedroom where I could watch through the window. I saw our car Betsy turn into the driveway. And I remember my father crossing the porch with Heather in his arms, wrapped in blankets, me running to the door to let them in. Dad whisked her indoors quickly, allowed us one small peek, cautioning us to be quiet as he quick-walked her to the back bedroom where they had set up an oxygen tent over her crib.

Xmas 1960: Out of the oxygen tent

For a long time we weren’t allowed into our parents’ room without permission. We had to scrub our hands with Fels Naptha soap, a wicked soap that stung. But it killed germs and we couldn’t afford to get her sick. What would her heart do then? So Linda, Tresa, and I were happy to oblige. But mostly, at least at first, we just peeked through the door. We had to be careful, though; no bursting in. We might startle her, and her heart might take a lurch it couldn’t recover from. Sometimes I just wanted to spend time with her, and so sat on the floor in the hallway with a pile of books, looking in. My mother made Heather some pretty butterflies out of candy wrappers, and hung them near her bed. She liked to watch them, her eyes moving but her body very still. “Hi, Heather,” I’d say, which meant of course "I love you," and I'd eagerly wait for her small smile. Each smile seemed to be another star God set in the dark night of my sadness. Miracles each. And this is when I began to feel God. These little miracles of my sister’s life.

Even outside the room we had to be careful. No loud noises. Not that we had to whisper, but no yelling or squealing. No hollering. Just everyday voices. I used to wonder why people criticized my parents. It wasn’t fair, they said, to burden us big girls—Linda, Tresa, and I—with a baby’s frail life. We shouldn’t have to live with death just down the hallway from our bedroom. This is when I began to understand that when people think with their heads without paying attention to God in their hearts, they can become very mean. They stuff their heads with too many rules. They have too many bad habits in the way they think. They think they have the right to tell other people what is right and wrong without ever having to understand it. Because didn’t Jesus say, “Suffer the little children to come unto me?” The sick ones and the healthy ones? No one would ever say Heather shouldn’t be at home if they understood that God is very real near death.

Heather in her bathinette

Heather blossomed in the sunshine of our home, like a little flower. In time she learned to sit up, to talk, and, delightfully, to sing—a breathy sweet voice that floated through the house like bird song. Our mother, your great-grandmother, began taking her outdoors on sunny days and, on Heather’s good days, let my sisters and I push her gently in the baby swing. When she gave Heather a bath in her bathinette out by the clothesline, sheets drying in the sunshine, we were allowed to pass the Ivory soap to her and help dribble water over her pale blue skin—skin as delicate and translucent as a poppy open to the sky. It hurt me, though, to see her scars; two zipper-like marks that ran around her rib cage, one under each arm. I’d distract myself by showing her how to wiggle her fingers in the water and make a splash; and I’d wonder at the her courage. 

By two-and-a-half she could pull herself up and walk alongside the couch. If we let her hold onto our fingers, she could walk across the room—though it took a lot of work and her blue lips would get even bluer. How she came by her shiny black shoes I don’t know, but Linda, Tresa, and I didn’t begrudge her the kind of shoes we would never be allowed for ourselves. “You might scratch the piano bench!” our mother said. But as much as we hated our Buster Browns—shoes so ugly and uncomfortable and so heavily toed that we had to stick our feet, when buying a new pair, into an X-ray machine to see where our toes were—we took pleasure in our little sister’s good fortune. Shiny shoes for a little girl the doctors didn’t think would ever walk. I admired her for making them liars. I was seven years old. And I understood that prayer was never a waste of time. And God grew more real in my heart with each passing day as she grew stronger.

Heather in my blue snowsuit

When she turned three it was winter and Mum pulled out my old blue snowsuit, one I’d worn when I was little. And while it was she or Dad who dressed Heather, I was allowed to mitten her hands. I loved to tuck her wee blue fingers into the mitts. “Three little kittens, have lost their mittens, and can’t tell where they are,” I’d sing. “Oh, mama dear, we greatly fear, our mittens we have lost.”

“What!” I’d cry, “Lost your mittens! You naughty kittens! You shall have no pie!” and Heather would smile, stronger now. I lived to see her smile, her chapped lips always so blue.

She had a bedtime routine. I might be busy doing cutouts, or playing a game with my other sisters, or coloring or reading to myself, but I found comfort in her schedule unfolding around me. Her jammies on, she first had to have her blue may-he-dun, then her pink. Once, when Auntie Grace was visiting, she got it backwards. First pink. What a hullabaloo. I had to rush into the bedroom and explain the error, praying that Heather wouldn’t die in her upset. She didn’t. Another miracle. After her “may-he-dun,” Heather had to be carried about the house, shutting all the cupboards and drawers, making sure everything was tucked into its place and put properly to bed. Jamie Boy, our canary, had to have his birdcage draped. The kitchen counter had to be wiped clean. Finally, sitting down on the yellow rocking chair, our mother had to first sing a verse of “Holy, Holy, Holy” and then two verses of “Silent Night.” Once Mum tried to shorten the routine but Heather cried, “No, no, shepherd’s cake! Shepherd’s cake!” It took awhile to figure out, but eventually Mum caught on and settled back in and sang the second verse of the Christmas carol.  “…shepherds quake...” We thought it was funny.

The routine became mine as much as Heather’s; and her stints at the hospital left the house empty and I didn’t sleep well and I rattled around with a hole in my own heart. When she returned, the house filled back up and I shut my eyes at night to a peaceful world.

Christmas 1960
Heather in her baby table with Linda

In March after Heather turned three in December, our brother Tim was born. He wasn’t much more than two or three weeks old when Mum decided to give him a bath in Heather’s old bathinette, set up next to the big plate glass window in the kitchen. Heather was feeding herself in the baby table over by the fireplace. Mum had just set our baby brother onto the rubber hammock stretched across the water, and was testing the temperature with her elbow. He was kicking and cooing, slurping on his fists, when something hit the window with a terrific thud, followed by a hailstorm of glass. A bird hurtled past my right shoulder, bounced off the table beside me and landed with high terrible squeals, wings flapping, onto the raised hearth across the room right next to Heather. She nearly came out of her chair in shrieking terror as the bird flopped and bounced.

Mum ran for Heather so fast she slammed her hip against a chair and nearly tripped over the bird now on the floor. She snatched Heather up, still screaming, unable to take her eyes off the bird and twisting in Mum’s arms to see. Mum rushed her to the other end of the house, exiting through the laundry room. My own heart pounded. Heather was going to die! Her heart, I knew, wouldn’t be able to withstand such a thing. 
My mother must have asked me to take care of Tim. Have you ever seen a baby littered in glass?

A hundred diamonds of light. Shimmering edges. A kaleidoscope of winking yellows and glimmering whites. A baby in a bath of shards, unthinkable danger. A blast of panic hit me, making me dizzy with fear. What if he moved? I lifted a chunk of glass off his cheek. Dear God, don’t let him move, don’t let him move. He stared up at me, his gaze somewhere behind me. No longer did he kick or slurp on his hands. He waited, as if he knew something was wrong. Quickly, I plucked off the bigger pieces of glass, working my way down his little body no bigger than a sugar sack. The flecks of glass couldn’t be picked up, or brushed—they’d scrape his skin.

We weren’t allowed to pick him up, my sisters and I—but I did. I tucked my hands one by one under his arms, gave him a little shake and took him hanging like a puppy from my hands to the utility room, where I set him into a basket of clean, stiff white diapers, freshly folded. He had survived with just one wee scratch on his ear lobe. A thin red line of blood. I realized Heather wasn’t crying anymore. Had she died? The quiet was so deep in the house. Through the kitchen door I could see the bird, a grouse my father later told me, lay dead in a ruffled heap of feathers. At the sound of Mum’s footfall coming down the hall, I whirled. Her smile sent a breeze through my heart! My both agreed, two miracles. She didn’t scold me for lifting Tim.

A few weeks later, in a day full of rain, Tim slept in Heather’s old pram (a kind of buggy babies used to sleep in) in front of the kitchen fire. Mum was sewing at one end the table. Linda, Tresa, and I were maybe playing a game like Sorry at the other. Maybe we were coloring. I don’t know what Heather was doing, but she sat on the floor nearby. Suddenly she Heather scooted across the room on her bum and pulled herself up the pram. I stopped to marvel at her struggle. Breathless, she reached in and took Timmy’s hand and tucked something into his palm. I went over.

“Look! Heather just gave Timmy a nickel!”

I thought about how beautiful life was.

But it wasn’t very long afterward that I awoke in the middle of the night, frightened. Something wrong. Horribly wrong. I crept into the hall. At the far end, light slipped through the crack at the bottom of my parents’ door, making an eerie glow over Mum’s polished floor. “Daddy?” I called nervously into the dark. “Daddy?”

Heather, taken about the time the she
nearly died in my father's arms. 

I crept down the long hallway, cracked the door a couple of inches. He sat on the edge of the bed, right there by the door, holding Heather—and her oxygen mask. Masks were used when oxygen had to be given quickly and in high concentration. They looked like a rubber cup with a hose attached, the hose going to the oxygen tank, attached to a gadget on the top. The tank was round and skinny, not as tall as a kitchen counter and as round as a small plate. When you turned the tank on, oxygen rushed from the tank through the hose to the rubber cup—which was supposed to be held over someone’s nose. Trouble was, Heather was afraid of the mask. To keep her from panicking—and her heart from racing too hard and killing her—my parents had to hold the rubber cup two inches from her face. Precious oxygen escaped but it couldn’t be helped. This was not the first time I’d seen Heather take one of these “spells, ” but it was the worst. Fear had woken me up. I could taste fear on my tongue, like something metal and sharp.

“Daddy?”

He looked up.

“May I come in?”

He nodded and motioned me to sit beside them. The bed sank a little under my weight, Heather startled. I reached over and took her fingers, happy that my touch instantly calmed her. At the end of the bed, Mum paced. Back and forth in front of the dresser she went. In front of me stood the oxygen tank.

In the terrible tension and rushed tiny gasps of my sister, I became fascinated by the gauge needle slipping closer to the red empty mark. I gave Dad a running commentary. Finally he said, “Brenda, it would be better to pray than chatter.”

I let go of Heather’s fingers, shoved my hands down between my legs and bowed my head. I’d been caught pretending she wasn’t dying. But she was. I did know this. And I knew that if she didn’t regain her breath within minutes, before the oxygen was gone, the sun would rise without my sister in its light. Frantically I prayed. I begged. I watched the needle sink into the red zone, like the spinner in the Shoots and Ladders game my sisters and I played. I reminded God of the grouse, how it came through the window, and how he’d let her live. Do it again. Please, I implored. Please. The hiss of the oxygen tank suddenly sputtered out. I slid my eyes sideways…and smiled. My little sister’s lovely translucent skin held the soft faint pink of sunlight at dawn.

Dad let me kiss her. She slid her eyes to look at me, too weak to smile. “Hello,” I said.

What I meant of course was “I love you.”

This was the night Heather nearly died. I knew in my heart I had seen a miracle, my sister living instead dying. I'd prayed that the whole wonderful miracle of her life would not end. Not yet.

If you start thinking with your head, you can find all kinds of things to argue about. You can say she was lucky. You can say it was my mother’s prayers. You can say that it just wasn’t time for her to die. You can say a lot of things. But I didn’t think about it at all. God woke me up to pray. And Heather was saved.

She died a few weeks later. I wasn’t there. She was in the hospital, where she’d had her third heart surgery. At three in morning, tucked into her oxygen tent, her red plastic monkeys strung from one side of her bed to another, her stuffed animals beside her, her heart just stopped. 

So you see, even though God didn’t let her live forever, and even though I’m sad she died alone, and even though I miss my little sister every day of my life, I am happy for her short life. Because of Heather, I spent three-and-a-half years knowing God in my heart, for I watched him take care of her, take care of my little brother, and I watched him take care of my parents, never letting them get discouraged by the mean things people said.

So, yes, there is a God. We can never find Him by asking our heads, though. We can only truly find Him when we feel Him. When listen to what’s inside us.

Me, Great-Granny, Auntie Linda, Auntie Tresa,

Great-Granddad, Heather
in Port Coquitlam, BC, Canada, 1960

I have many other stories. If you want, I can tell you those too.