Children of heaven

There's something very wrong when an eight month old baby starts to seize, going absent before you. The beep goes off while she rapidly desaturates. Half her body starts to jerk and you call out her name repeatedly whilst stroking her head. Her stare is blank. And for a moment, almost lifeless.

She does not make a single sound while her body fails her.

I could never stand it when my niece and nephew cry. One afternoon my house was in an uproar. People were shouting as per usual and my niece became distressed and she started crying. I picked her up without thought, nestled her in my arms and ran outside my house away from the ugliness of it all. A deeply ingrained habit, I always flinch and shut my eyes tightly when I hear angry voices. As if somehow they would magically disappear. As if the world would change if I wished hard enough. I couldn't bear that my niece had to be exposed to any sort of human weakness.

I had the same inclination with this baby. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was hanging around the wards as part of our after-hours rotation. She was alone in her cot again, crying. She had been having seizures everyday for the past few weeks. It felt natural to pick her up from her cot, cuddling her and stroking her back. As if with each caress, somehow the world would change and she would be protected from the ugliness of life.

It's hard seeing children suffer. Innocent souls burdened with illness. How does one watch a one year old infant lie in her cot, frothing saliva at the mouth, eyes vacant, body quadriplegic and attached to a feeding tube. You sit and watch for a while. Try to play with the baby. But at some point you have to leave. You can't sit there forever. Nothing would change. She doesn't respond to you. Forever ceases to be desirable. Death would seem more merciful.

So purposeless a life yet there must be a greater meaning in all of these. To test the human spirit. And motherly love. To appreciate the normal and still love the different. To teach us empathy and compassion. Whenever I see the parents of all these children, I am filled with a profound admiration for them. They renew my faith in mankind.

But most of all, these children remind me that children are very precious human beings. For without them, the bearers of innocence and hope, we would all be sad and empty people with no hope nor desire to better ourselves.