Christmas With David

Our first Christmas with David was (like any new parent's) filled with joy. But we also had the added excitement and anxiety of the news that my early release from the Marine Corps to return to college had been approved. My desire to finish my education had kicked into high gear when Nancy and I found out she was expecting.

There was so much change to absorb; bottles, diapers, feeding schedules, the needs of an infant and a new life outside the Corps. We picked out a little Charlie Brown tree for the three of us with a few decorations for the apartment. I remember the joy of hanging his "Baby's First Christmas" ornament that year.

Nancy took to mothering like a duck to water and quickly mastered the basics. But, we were still young, inexperienced and far from family and home. My role was primarily relief duty, to catch the diaper changing and feeding when Nancy needed to sleep. If it was important she wasn’t going to leave it up to me. Then David started crying on Christmas Eve.

I looked intently at my infant son, marveling at the complex faces he made, without a clue what they meant. We changed him, burped him, walked him…nothing helped. I felt bad but even in his discomfort I smiled at the mad faces he made with his little balled up fists going outward. He cried into the night and now we began to worry. The strain of new parenthood met with exhaustion and we looked at each other with no answers. David eventually fell into a fitful sleep which would erupt into cries unexpectedly as we were startled from our own sleep.

On Christmas Day without any idea what we should do to do we made the long drive to Camp Pendleton’s Naval Hospital where David had been born. Eventually, we saw a pediatrician who after a peek in his ears announced with a look of mild annoyance “he has an ear infection”. Relieved and with our first lesson in parenting in hand, we were on our way home. This would be the last Christmas that David did not wear a smile all day.

David loved Christmas not for the presents but for the commotion. He loved it for the chaos of big family chatter, our big breakfast, piles of gift trash, Grandma’s food and rob-your-neighbor. He loved sitting with AJ going through his gifts and talking to him in that sing-song patter they shared together. Most of all, David enjoyed the happiness of others.

Of all our family traditions, the one that David cherished more than any other was “sibling presents”, a gift exchange for the brothers and sisters on Christmas Eve where every present has to come from the dollar store. I can still see David on his last Christmas Eve, sitting on the big family room couch with his bag of presents between his legs. One by one he flipped them across the room to each sibling. They were carefully selected, delivered with humor and a big David grin. He loved being from a big family, he loved being the oldest, he loved being a brother and he loved his family more than anything in his life. In that simple act of love, we see David at his truest.

Are There Birthdays In Heaven?

On the morning of David’s birthday I stood at his grave. The frozen grass, the dull gray sky and frigid wind reflected the loss in my heart. As tears rolled down my face my thoughts drifted to the joy of his birth and his last birthday.

I had just returned from my first overseas deployment in March of 1984. Nancy and I not only were newlyweds but we really didn’t know each other that well. We’d had a whirlwind romance and our marriage was followed by a 7 month separation. Nancy and I left Missouri and drove across the U.S. to Camp Pendleton with all the joy of new love.

We settled into a tiny apartment in San Clemente two blocks from the beach. It was so small that you could stand in all three rooms from one spot but we were happy. Within weeks Nancy learned she was pregnant. Our excitement was followed quickly by the sobering realization that in a few short months our lives would be forever changed. If it was a boy he would be named David Daniel after my older brother David who died at 18 months.

Every step of her pregnancy was filled with expectation and excitement; the first check-up, the first flutter, Lamaze classes and buying maternity clothes. As her stomach grew I felt a pride of pending fatherhood as we walked and were greeted with smiles from people. Being young and broke we spent our free time mostly going for walks on the beach. It was there we developed a lifelong love our kids will recognize, for Hawaiian Shaved Ice. We also discovered that as Nancy got bigger she went downhill easily but uphill back to the apartment was another story! I’d stand in back of her and push as we laughed our way home.

While the birth of every child is memorable, David’s was particularly so. We had been to a wedding on Saturday night and I had had a little too much to drink. I was also fighting a cold and exhaustion from a 25 mile hike the day before. So as to not disturb Nancy when we got home I fell asleep on a tiny couch. I’d been asleep no more than an hour when Nancy shouted out “Chris!” I bolted upright. Nancy said “We’re having a baby”. Through the sleep and hangover I saw her standing in front of the bathroom door with water dripping down on the floor between her legs, her water had broken. I was instantly awake and sober.

Water breaking had not been part of our plans so I wasn’t even sure what it meant but I knew we had to get Nancy to the Naval Hospital and quickly. I grabbed the keys and said “let’s go”. Nancy said “no, not until I take a shower”, I was dumbfounded. She said she wasn’t going to go to the hospital dirty. She got in the shower. I asked her how she felt and she said “fine, doesn’t hurt at all…oooowwwwwww”. We laughed with nervous excitement as we kept saying “we’re having a baby tonight!”

We finally jumped in the car around 2 a.m. and headed towards base. The gate guard at the remote Las Pulgas gate asked us where we were going in the middle of the night. I was just a lance corporal so hardly carried any weight. I told him Nancy was in labor. He quickly waved us through and said “don’t drive too fast” I said “absolutely”. As soon as we were out of sight I drove as fast as I could without crashing.

We checked into the hospital and they whisked Nancy away. A Navy hospital is functional and nothing more. There were no soothing birthing rooms and I waited anxiously in a waiting room. When they finally summoned me in Nancy was already in the delivery room, which was also a sterile surgical room. It was so bright and full of stainless steel it hurt my eyes.

I kissed Nancy and touched her stomach. It was so tight. I timed her contractions and tried to remember the things they taught us in Lamaze but I quickly realized the last thing Nancy cared about was Lamaze. I pulled up a chair and held her hand as she drifted in and out of consciousness. After a couple of hours exhaustion took over and fell asleep with my head on her bed. Suddenly I was jolted awake as she hissed “I’m having a baby and you can’t even stay awake?!” I looked up to the now very familiar glare of an angry Nancy.

Finally, Nancy was fully dilated and things happened quickly. As the nurses and doctor arrived I was pushed to the side. I glanced nervously at the heart monitor not sure if the numbers were good or bad. As the baby’s head began to emerge I was mesmerized at the miracle before me. Then after several minutes the baby fully emerged and the doctor held him up “Congratulations, it’s a boy”. They placed him on Nancy’s chest. The love I saw in her eyes told me I’d been replaced as the love of her life. It was Sunday morning, Dec. 9, 1984.

I was not allowed to hold him right away because they needed to put him on a warming table. He was naked except for a blue knit cap Nancy had brought. As he lay there I did touch his feet and hands and marveled at the softness of his skin and his full head of shiny black hair. He was sturdy and had the familiar Lozano nose. A million thoughts went through my head. Finally, they wrapped him in a blanket and handed him to me. If I close my eyes I can still remember every detail of that moment.

I cradled his body in my left arm with his head wresting by my elbow. I raised him and lowered my head and gently kissed him on his forehead and nose. I whispered “welcome to our world, I wish you only great things”. The smell was more wonderful than anything I’d ever known. Eventually I had to give him back and then they whisked him off to the nursery so Nancy could rest.

[ I didn't realize the coincidence until I wrote this story but when David died I leaned over and kissed him on his forehead and nose the same way I’d done on the day of his birth and said “It’s ok David, you fought hard now it’s time to go home. Thank you for being my son”]

A few days later I arrived with a new car seat and we took David home to our apartment. David’s birth was the first of many changes that were about to occur. I was being discharged from the Marine Corps only a few weeks later. Nancy and I would be living with my mom and I was returning to college. David’s birth had convinced me I had to sacrifice to get ahead and provide for my family. In early January I loaded Nancy and David on an airplane and with the help of my brother and a friend moved back to St. Louis.

Over the years birthdays would hold a special place for David. It was with David that I started a tradition of taking my kids out to breakfast on their birthdays. In 2008 David was living in Kenosha, Wisconsin in an apartment close to Lake Michigan. He was not going to be able to return for his birthday because of work. I’d missed his previous birthday because I was in Iraq. On a complete spur of the moment I asked Nancy on the 8th “do you mind if I go to Kenosha to spend his birthday with him?” Nancy thought it was a great idea. David’s grandfather Mike joined me and we drove up to surprise him. We arrived in the early evening. I stood outside his door and called him on my cell phone “Hi David its Dad, what are you doing?” He answered “not much just watching TV.” I then knocked on the door. “Just a minute Dad someone’s at the door”. He opened the door with his phone in his ear. He instantly began laughing loudly with those glowing eyes of his “You’re so stupid!” David loved a good surprise.

The next morning we got up and went to Franks a diner we’d seen on a Food Network show. It was snowy and cold just as David liked it. We squeezed into the tiny 1920’s diner and laughed and ate and laughed some more. After breakfast we went to the store so I could buy ingredients to make his favorite fajita dinner and carrot cake. That evening we ate and laughed some more lit his candles and sang him Happy Birthday. In the dim glow of the apartment he smiled that big David smile. I just remember how happy he was and am so grateful that I went.

As the cold snaps me back to the present I am left with the magnitude of his loss and my complete loneliness. Gone are the laughs, gone are the smiles, gone are the things that made David so easy to love. Gone is my first born. Gone is a piece of me. My spirit is buoyed only by the hope of the resurrection and the love of my family. As I pray quietly I ask David “Are there birthdays in heaven?”