20

Twenty years ago, the Iraqi trial of Saddam Hussein began. Marlon Brando died. New York City held the groundbreaking for the One World Trade Center. Ken Lay, the former chairman of Enron, was indicted. Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in prison for illegal stock trading. George W. Bush was in the White House. John Kerry was running for president. Political newbie Barack Obama gave the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention. Gas was $1.91 a gallon. Matt Hudson was sixteen.

That world changed dramatically on July 28, 2004. It started like any other day, but nothing looked the same when it was over.

Matt, Halle, and I sat down to eat a lunch of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Halle had used water rather than milk to dilute the condensed soup, so Matt couldn’t help but make a sarcastic comment about how delicious the soup tasted. After lunch, Matt and Halle took the van and delivered the weekly shopper. Later, Matt went to the basement to play video games while he waited for a late afternoon football practice at the high school.

While working in the yard, I heard a loud moan from Matt’s bathroom window. I hurried inside and found my son groaning on the floor, holding his head. I could see his pain was excruciating. He wasn’t coherent. I couldn’t understand the problem, except he had a massive headache. He had vomited his lunch into the toilet and continued to have dry heaves between groans. He lapsed in and out of consciousness. At times, he was lifeless on the floor, unresponsive to my words or touch. Then he’d awaken and groan even louder. When he was conscious enough to be alert, he asked What’s happening to me?

I thought he was dehydrated from two-a-day practices, so I tried to get him to drink water. He didn’t want anything. We decided to take him to the hospital. We got Matt up, and he walked to the van, where he promptly laid down. When we arrived at the hospital, he struggled to sit up. He tried to put on his t-shirt but couldn’t coordinate his arms. He said Dad, help me! Those were the last words my son spoke to me.

Within the hour, he stopped breathing and had a massive bilateral stroke. He had suffered the cascading effects of a ruptured arterial-venous malformation in the lower right quadrant of his brain. By the end of the day, the deed was done. He was comatose. Little did I know that he and I would now live in different worlds.

I’ve never prayed so hard, so long, or so frequently as I did in those early years after his injury. I read as many books on prayer as I could find. I was desperate to uncover the spiritual formula that might guarantee all the answers I sought. Eventually, my enthusiasm faded in the face of thousands of unanswered prayers. I unwillingly resigned myself to the realization that God repeatedly had said No.

Twenty years ago, my wife and I relinquished our son to a remote life. A brother and two sisters gave up meaningful futures with their sibling. Grandparents said goodbye to a grandson who wouldn’t see their last days. Uncles, aunts, cousins, and friends couldn’t even begin to conceive what his life might have been. Matt entered a realm reserved only for him, where time and relevance didn’t exist.

Twenty years is a long time to go in the same direction, especially when there are no off-ramps, rest stops, scenic overlooks, or shortcuts. Progress is imperceptible; hope is inaccessible; faith is indifferent; but love is unshakeable. So many people have prayed. Friends have had remarkable dreams. Others have had intense moments of Spirit-led intercession. Despite all this seemingly consequential effort over all these years, Matt remains unreachable.

For a long time, I searched for a reason as to why this happened. I couldn’t grasp the good that might be wrapped up in such misery or the great end destined beyond a long passage of disappointment and despair. I gave up trying to conceive of the alchemy needed to transform such a life-altering trauma into a life-giving blessing. I surmised that not even God, with all his infinite wisdom at his disposal, could find a rationale that would explain all this suffering – something to which Matt would say Yeah, Lord, that makes perfect sense. 

I’m still wondering if I made the right decision to take extraordinary steps to save his life. Matt’s doctors told us his brain was swelling and, if left alone, the result would be death from a cranial hemorrhage. We had thirty minutes to decide if we would let nature take its course and allow our son to leave this world or if we would intervene and authorize a craniotomy to remove the top part of his skull to permit his brain to expand unimpeded.

The neurologist couldn’t give any guidance on the eventual condition of Matt’s brain if we proceeded with the operation. Once the swelling subsided, what would be his aftermath? Would he emerge from his coma, regain cognitive function, and be discharged to a rehabilitation center where, in a matter of weeks or months, his life would return to what it had been before the injury? The doctors had no way of gauging the extent of the brain damage. Only time could tell whether he would come back as Matt or if he would return at all.

We held a family conference. We all agreed Matt would not want to live a life hampered by a severe brain injury, where he might not speak, see, or move, and where his perception of the world around him was so contracted he would be labeled with the pejorative term vegetable. I was conflicted between doing what Matt might want and doing everything to give Matt the best chance in whatever the outcome presented.

I imagined the following scenario. I let Matt leave this world, and I returned to mine. Months or years later, I learn about a young man who had a brain injury identical to Matt’s. He was Matt’s age when the injury occurred. He had a craniotomy. He recovered mentally and physically, and now he’s living the life he lived before the assault without any permanent deficits or damage. I imagined telling myself Matt could have been this young man if I had given him the chance to survive and heal. But I let him go because I didn’t want to face an uncertain future. And now, here is the sequel that could have been his if I’d kept him alive.

So, the decision was made, on my shoulders, to allow Matt to fight back. Yet, none of the hope I had in my heart that fateful afternoon ever materialized. I kept Matt alive to fight a battle he could never win. Slowly and silently, he slipped away to live a diminished life, the contours of which we could never have seen when we were forced to decide between his living or leaving.

Twenty years is 631,000,000 seconds, and for five seconds in that very long period, Matthew was not disabled or distant. It was August 9, 2014. The wedding ceremony uniting my daughter Halle with Tyler Neyens had just finished. At that instant, we were engaged in the commotion of gathering the family to the front of the sanctuary for a photo. I was on the stage marshaling the troops when I glanced down the main aisle and saw Matthew sitting in his wheelchair, about twenty feet away. Without thinking about the obvious, I yelled Matt, get up here! And I caught the moment like a diamond in my hand. None of the dozens of people within the sound of my voice heard me shout to him. For five seconds he was not blind, deaf, or lame. For five seconds he wasn’t even in a wheelchair. For five seconds he was alive to me.

Not long ago, I crossed paths with a man I did not know well. I’d seen him only a few times over the last five years. So naturally, I was surprised when he began to tell me how I might deal with the depression that has enveloped my life for a long time. He knew Matthew had lived in a state of limited awareness for twenty years. He also recognized the improbability that his life would change dramatically for the better. He suggested I ask myself two things: what would Matt want for his dad, and what would he desire for himself? Presumably, Matt would want his dad to be happy, and for himself, he would not want to live in his current condition.

A weighty conversation commenced that lasted nearly thirty minutes, focused primarily on reframing Matt’s life as a decision point for him rather than for his parents. In other words, if I knew with absolute certainty that Matt would not want to continue living in his current circumstances, then perhaps it was time to help Matt leave them. He segued into the idea of hospice care, where my wife and I would stop feeding our son so death could come upon him in due course. Appropriate drugs could be administered to make Matt comfortable so he would not be in any pain as his life slipped away. It would take about forty days for him to die and sooner if we withheld water.

This man was a physician, but he wasn’t Dr. Kevorkian. Was he talking about assisted suicide? Or palliative euthanasia? How could it be legal in Iowa to withhold food and water from someone who was not terminally ill? How could we commence hospice care for Matt if he weren’t dying? (After conferring with a hospice nurse, I learned it is legal in Iowa for parents to withhold life-sustaining nourishment from a child under circumstances that don’t involve end-of-life care.)

I listened respectfully while my mind remained in a state of moderate disbelief. Not once in twenty years had I entertained the idea that I could facilitate Matt’s premature passing by cloaking the act as something in his highest good. If I could assume Matt did not want to live his life anymore, I could make his wish come true. Matt would be happy because he got what he desired, and I would be pleased because I would no longer be disheartened about his miserable existence. Matt would leave to live a better life in heaven, and I would be free to live a better life here.

The doctor made all of this sound so simple and easy to accomplish. I thanked him for his thoughts. With his urging, I told him I’d relay them to my wife. He offered to sit down with us to explore options and discuss details. As suddenly as it started, our conversation ended, matter-of-factly, as though we had merely pondered the weather forecast for the week ahead.

I left without any ill will towards this man, who seemed quite satisfied with himself for giving me insights I’d never considered. Our dialogue appeared to reinforce in him the principle that, as a physician, he was a guiding light, although a guide void of any understanding of the trauma surrounding Matt’s injury or of any empathy towards a father and mother who had resigned their lives for another. In some odd way, the doctor was suggesting the last twenty years only confirmed the mistake that was made when it was decided to keep Matt alive. That error could be corrected now if Mom and Dad had the right mindset.

I dismissed the doctor’s advice. God willing, I’ll never have to talk to him about it for the rest of my life. He meant well but spoke from the arrogance of academic knowledge and medical degrees. In a culture fanatically obsessed with juvenescence, fitness, and sexual allure, there’s little space for the profoundly disabled or the frail elderly. These are the castaways and leftovers who can contribute nothing of social significance. Whether they recognize their depreciated station in life is irrelevant. It’s more important they be allowed to pass to something better.  This was the doctor’s mentality, and he made it out to be a gift to me.

I didn’t take the time to gift him what twenty years have given me. I’ve learned that this life is a shadow of the one to come. As human beings, our worth doesn’t come from things that fade, like outward appearance, physical abilities, vocational achievements, and material possessions. Matt’s soul is not sacred, and his hospital bed doesn’t rest on hallowed ground, but his life is worthy of being treasured. Without uttering another word or doing another thing, he still affirms the preciousness of his creation. He is the only Matthew Hudson that ever was or will be.

I also know that enduring sorrow tempers so much of the vibrancy of life. I’ve learned that time heals nothing; agony morphs from raw to numb, but the sting never fades. Grief is a lonesome journey, and no one else can be expected to walk with me without pretending to understand. The hard truth is that it takes only a season of time for the world to move on, utterly unaware that I’ve taken just one step away from the moment my life was arrested for another.

I’ve learned that all are loved, but few are healed. A thousand prayers aren’t more effective than one, and remarkable dreams and visions are never promos of better things to come. Perhaps most meaningfully, I’ve learned to live in the prosecution of my faith, where these last two decades became the refiner’s fire of the two that preceded them. In the callous embrace of discouragement, my faith could not be grounded in fake invincibility to conquer what I feared or survive what I hated. On a solitary expedition of sadness and pain, I had to accept the unavoidable dread of an uncertain future, … then look at the mountains ahead and hear my God and King calling me to come and climb.

Somewhere Somehow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg9nSpZKtNs