Happy First Birthday Lucy

How we crammed 1,000 people into a hospital room in a single moment

I had an intense fear as Alyssa and I left the hospital nearly a year ago after losing Lucy. I feared that one day that I would forget her. I sat staring out the window trying to place all the intense experiences and emotions that we had dealt with over the past months and more specifically the eight days with our daughter. I genuinely did not know what it would mean for our life moving forward.

Today, on Lucy’s first birthday, I can reflect back on that incredible day in the hospital when she was born and know with certainty that she will never be forgotten. I have been amazed at the consistency in which she is on my mind, her presence and lessons materializing themselves before me in nearly every moment. Alyssa senses it too. It’s a comforting situation to find yourself in as a parent of a child who has passed.

When I think back on December 20th, 2023 I am primarily struck with wonder and awe. Standing outside the NICU room and watching the incredible individuals stabilize Lucy made me realize how connected we all are as human beings. There are individuals, who I will never meet, that trained someone on a very particular procedure that their trainee then continued to practice and perfect throughout their career. Then one day they came into our lives by performing that exact procedure on my daughter to save her life.

Isn’t that incredible to think about?

We all come and go throughout each other’s lives. All of us seem to be worried first and foremost about the story that is playing out before our own eyes. And most of the time, we are a blip on the radar of someone else’s experience, and they on ours. Yet, your actions can have far reaching impacts that you cannot even begin to fathom.

Standing in the NICU one year ago I realized how intertwined all of our stories are. While I physically saw a dozen individuals taking life saving action upon my daughter my mind stretched to the thousands of individuals that were involved in the lives of those ever so important dozen to make them ready for this moment that I was witnessing play out in front of me. I felt comforted and connected in a manner in which I have never experienced before in my life, and from that day forward I have elected to see and experience the beauty of this interconnectedness more in my life.

It may sound strange, but this perspective has given me a renewed sense of purpose in life. When I was in the depths of my battle with alcoholism I felt completely alone and isolated. I felt lost and that the actions I took largely didn’t matter. After feeling that intense interconnectedness with humans who I will never know in this lifetime, I now see how connected we all are and how meaningful even the most “basic” life may be.

So on this first birthday of Lucy’s, I reflect back on that lesson and sense of awe that was given to me in the NICU. Our daughter imparted so many lessons to us in her lifetime that one year later I am still sorting through and trying to integrate them all into my life. She’s a teacher that imparted an incredible amount of gifts of knowledge to us in a flash.

Love you forever, Lucy. Happy birthday and thank you.