Tears in my eyes ... Emotion in my heart

I know I already posted today... but I wanted to share one more thing. I wrote it in my journal just now... so I will just type what I wrote there:

July 15, 2008 - Tuesday
I am sitting here in my bed with my second son, Tyler, sleeping next to me ... tears are in my eyes and emotion in my heart. Today is the three year mark since Parker's death...

The tears are in my eyes because of the events of this evening mostly... Rodger, Tyler, and I watched the slideshow DVD of Parker my brother Toran made after Parker's death. It has photos of Parker throughout his life with music to it. The last part of the DVD has the photographs of Parker's last week on this earth. It shows him hooked up to the machines and also when we all took turns holding him and the emotions on our faces. This was the first time we had really shown Tyler the DVD. He loved seeing all the photos. I thik this was the first time he started to understand more about his brother as we told him it was Parker in all of the photos. Then when it got to the end with the hospital...... Not too far into this last section Rodger noticed Tyler's head dropped some and his lower lip began to quiver... as it continued Tyler's head dropped more and he soon turned onto his knees and forearms on the couch and dropped his head. After a few minutes he looked up and watched some more... then he began to cry and cry and cry. He didn't even watch the rest of the DVD. He just cried and cried. He buried his head into me and just cried. It took me about 5-10 minutes to get him to calm down enough and he finally fell asleep next to me in my arms.

I had no idea this would affect him so much. I think he finally understood this is his brother... the one we have been telling him about, visiting at the cemetary, and praying for each day... and for him to see what his brother went through was so hard on Tyler... Rodger, Tyler and I just cried... holding each other... and missing Parker so much... it is so hard sometimes.

The gospel is so important. We have to do all we can to keep the commandments and be worthy to be together forever. I want to share what is in my heart with everyone... the joy and sadness - it all teaches us so much - especially if we let God be the teacher...

Our Oldest Son...

Three years ago today our son died.

Three years seems like such a long time... and yet I know more years will pile up before I will hold him in my arms again. I wanted to share a little of his life, mostly through photographs. (click on the photographs if you want to see them larger)


Here is Parker two days after he was born in the NICU at UVRMC. The day after this was taken was when he was taken to PCMC where he had his first angioplasty/catheterization procedure. He finally came home after 10 days. I need to find the photographs that were taken of him in the Life Flight incubator. He looked so little in there.


Parker is about 3 weeks old now. He loved to sleep on his daddy.


Parker loved baths. Because of his reflux and food allergies (to the milk protein) he threw up A LOT!!! He got a lot of baths and loved all of them. We sometimes went through 5 sets of clothes and 10 diapers a day. We took ziploc bags with us everywhere we went ... just in case.


There is one with Parker in a blanket. We used to tie knots at the end of the blankets and swing him. He loved it. Parker had great expressions on his face.


Here are photographs of Parker with his cousin James Shumaker. James was born 9 days after Parker. Parker's other cousin Reese MacArthur was born 5 1/2 weeks after Parker. We have some great photographs with those two, but I realized I can't find them! I think Jenni, my sister in law has them. I need to get copies of those. One of my favorites is when Parker and Reese were sitting at a little table have a "tea party". Sometimes seeing James and Reese getting so big now can be hard, imagining what Parker would be like with them, but I try to use them to help me imagine what Parker might be doing.


Parker loved to copy us... We would shake the bottle up to mix the fomula up. One day he started to shake it periodically as he held the bottle and would get spurts of fomula all over his face. I wondered why he did that. Then I realized he was copying us! He was shaking it like we would before we gave it to him. It was hilarious as he would have milk all over his face.


The eyes on Parker at the 4th of July Hot Air Balloon festivities.... I miss seeing those beautiful blue eyes. One of my favorite photographs is Parker with his cheerios or "de-dos" as he called them. In time he became creative when given stick pretzels and cheerios as a snack. He would stick the stick pretzel into the center of the cheerio and eat the cheerio off the stick pretzel. I tried it and kept breaking the cheerio.... He was good at it :).


At first Parker did the tuck-n-roll to get around. Then he found the art of the army crawl! He had perfect form as he put one arm in front of the other. It was fun to watch! Then he learned to walk at 10 months... he became a very fast kid!


Many events took place in September and October... from going to Parker's first BYU game... to going to the Corn Maze... to Parker's first and only birthday!


Not to mention Halloween was a few days later! And playing with all of his cousins! Our little scarecrow was all worn out!

The first year of Parker's life came to an end. The last 8 1/2 months will be continued another day this week. I hope you enjoyed a brief overview of our wonderful son, Parker!

We love you and miss you Parker.

The Three Year Mark Week Begins

Today is July 8th... I was taking care of Ami and Enoch today (Lori and Friday's two kids) so I am just not getting to post on my blog. To summarize some of my feelings I will write some of what I wrote in my journal last night:

July 7th, 2008
"I will write more these coming days, but tomorrow is the three year mark since Parker's surgery where our lives changed forever... I feel numb and sad thinking it has been so long since I have held my son in my arms... I know I have learned so much from this trial... I feel so much more love in my heart. I love everyone (most of the time, haha)... my testimony of eternal families and God's plan has grown so much. I want to share my heart with everyone I can. At the same time that I feel this joy I also feel pain and sadness knowing it will be a long time before I can see Parker again. I am grateful for the times I have felt his spirit - he has a very distinct and powerful spirit and I always know when he is around. I usually feel him closest at the temple.

At the end of this month we will have a Family Reunion - the first MacArthur Reunion! I designed the shirt and on the back of the shirts for the grandkids it will say "Grandchild" and the number they are. Ever since Parker was born when we talked about doing reunions I always thought it would be cool to number the shirts of the grandkids and have a group picture with all their numbers and the children looking over their shoulders. I am still excited about the idea but very sad that #15 won't be in the group photograph...

I was just calculating... I do that a lot you know... that Tyler will be almonst eactly the same age when Lincoln is born as Parker would have been when Tyler was born! Crazy huh? Parker would have been 113 days minus three years of age. I am due to have Lincoln on Nov. 11th. If Lincoln was born on Nov. 1st Tyler would be 110 days minus three years of age. WOW! I love my boys so much!"

Below is the story I wrote before about our son Parker (I updated a few parts reflecting Tyler to be more current)...:

"My husband and I have recently lost a child. It has been very difficult ... we just miss our little boy a ton and want to just hold him, teach him, and see him running around and learning again. With Parker being our first child we have found it is hard to go from being a parent and then have the parental responsibilities just stop. We now have another child, Tyler, who is now 2 years old. I was 2 months along when all of this happened with Parker.

Parker was born with aortic stenosis, narrowing in the aortic valve. As he grew, if the valve didn't grow with him, the pressure to get the blood through would increase which would put stress on the heart. So, when he was 8 days old they did a balloon procedure (angioplasty/catheterization) that went into an artery in his leg and up the artery to the aortic valve where they would stretch the valve to open it up. He had his second procedure when he was one year old. We went up for follow ups every three months at Primary Children's. Most people I know with this heart condition had this procedure done every 5+ years... but unfortunately Parker's wouldn't grow with him as well.

In June we saw a lot of symptoms of his heart narrowing again... sweaty, fast or heavy breathing, blue lips, sleeping more, etc... so we took him in early for tests. Sure enough the pressure in his heart was an 84.. the highest it had ever been. We were sad but we knew the drill... three weeks later, Friday July 8th, Parker went in for a same day angioplasty/catherterization surgery. The time was about 8:30 when they started the procedure. At 10:30 they called us in... there was a code blue. Parker's heart had stopped and they couldn't get it going even with CPR for about an hour. They got him on an ECMO machine, a bypass machine that would pump the blood from his heart and oxygenate it outside his body and cycle it back in. He was on this for 2 days. They did tests on his heart, kidneys, liver, etc and all looked great. They were cautiously optimistic because if there are problems with these organs it usually means there are problems with the brain as well.

Parker was in a coma the entire time. He never woke up. They got him off the ECMO on Sunday and came off of it very well breathing well, etc. We were hopeful. THey were slowly getting him off the medications etc hoping he would wake up. He didn't. On monday they did the telling test... the MRI... to see what type of damage there was to his brain. They took him in at 4:30pm and at 5:30 they gave us our results... catastrophic brain damage. Our little boy, just 20 1/2 months old, wouldn't be with us much longer.

On Wednesday we took him home. We took him off everything. We knew this was what God wanted. As sad as we were we understood too. He began to change, signs of severe brain damage... still unresponsive. We continued to hold him, cry, and just talk to him, trying to take in every last moment. Friday July 15th, at 11:51, he passed away. We no longer had our little man on this earth. It was hard.. it sucks really. No words to describe it. Even though you feel comfort to help make it through it we still struggle just wanting him to be here. With time it gets easier and harder at the same time. I do ok at times and other times I just want to cry or just talk to someone about him... i don't want to forget anything about him. I hope to never experience anything like this again. I don't know if I could handle it."

We are approaching the 3 year mark since Parker died.... too long... a lot of emotions I don't always want to face...

Interviews .... Lots of Them

There has been a lot of stress in our lives this past month since both Rodger and I lost our jobs. Watching the money in our account dwindle each day as bills needed to be paid has been hard. Because of all the medical bills, etc we could never seem to build up our savings much at all. Now it is all in our checking account... and will be gone soon. We have had some wonderful people give of their hearts and give money and food to help to helps us survive. It has been a total blessing and I pray every day for those who have helped us.

Yesterday was the last day of our insurance. I filled our prescriptions so hopefully we can make it. I will get on temporary Medicaid though Baby Your Baby that will help me until the end of August. This will hopefully buy us enough time for Rodger to get a new job and have the insurance kick in. This leads me to the good news....

We have put in SO many applications for various jobs. Some are out of state and some in state (Utah and Salt Lake counties). Rodger had a job he felt really good about. After having two really good interviews the company ended up giving the job to someone else who had more experience in the hotel industry. That was really hard on Rodger and there was much contention in the land in the Shumaker household.

I told Rodger we just had to keep going and put in more applications. I put in almost 15 applications for Rodger in the past 5 days. The phone calls have started rolling in for interviews. Rodger had one this afternoon in West Valley City. He just called and the interview went well and he will have a second interview on Monday at 1:00 with several other people. There are a lot of really good things about this position and company.

Rodger had two interviews tomorrow... one at 10:30am in Vernal and then another at 4:30pm in West Jordan. Both are very good in different ways. Vernal would require us to move but does pay a little higher. West Jordan is closer and looks like a good job for Rodger to be the Facility Manager over their new headquarters. We will see how those go. Then Rodger has another interview on Thursday afternoon in SLC (near West Valley City). It is lower paying according to their write-up, but most of the time they raise the salary once they see what his qualifications are. So, we will see.

I will put more in today... we gotta do our part in order to be able to receive God's blessings. Even as stressful as all of this is I am learning more and more that God will help take care of us as we do our part and keep the commandments.

Thank you for the prayers and love... we will keep you up-to-date.

Go Rodger!