There comes a time when you feel as if you are on top of the world.  Everything is going your way and it looks to continue on for some time.  This was how I felt until August 1, 2001.  That was the day when my world stopped spinning and I was thrown out into space as gravity seemed to stop working for a brief time.

 

On July 7, 2001 my daughter Hailey was born.  It had been a planned pregnancy and she was born healthy and alert from the very beginning.  Over the course of the next three weeks my wife and I were in awe of how much this new addition to our family meant to us.  Every day for the first two weeks the three of us were together.  During the weekend of the third week we moved into a new, bigger house and now the circle seemed complete.

 

Unfortunately, our contentedness was not to last.  Little Hailey had gotten a cold during the move and so our workload increased a little and our sleep decreased a lot.  By July 31 she was eating less and less, but otherwise seemed pretty healthy for a three week old with a cold.  But that night things took a turn for the worse and at three in the morning on August 1 we took her to the Emergency.  Hailey had become non-responsive and we couldn’t get her to stay awake long enough to even try to feed her.

 

When we went to the Emergency room we thought we were being just a little overcautious and that they would just give her a little glucose by way of IV so that her energy level would increase and we could take her home and feed her.  Within half an hour of being at the hospital we were told that Hailey had Leukemia.  My wife and I were stunned.  We both started crying and call our parents up.  By 6AM Hailey had died due to complications from the Leukemia.

 

My wife, Tracy, and I were stunned and in more pain than can possibly be described.  The next couple of days were a blur as we made all of the preparations for her burial and her memorial.  Friends and family flew in from all over the country and we were well taken car of by everyone, even people we did not know.  We were fortunate enough to meet a pastor named Ted who helped bring us comfort and some understanding when we needed it most.  Ted performed the service when we buried Hailey and it was simply one of the most beautiful services I’ve ever heard.

 

When Tracy and discussed what we wanted to do for a memorial service we decided that it was best to celebrate Hailey’s life and the joy that she brought to those who knew her.  We held the memorial service at McDowell Creek Falls outside of Lebanon, Oregon.  Everyone walked down to a platform above the falls; I said a few words and my wife and I each read a poem.  Everyone then took a red rose and threw it over the falls.  It was somehow beautiful and cleansing to see all of those bright red flowers floating in the water in contrast to the green of the northwestern rainforest.

 

Tracy and I have each worked at healing in our own ways.  I took comfort from knowing that she did not suffer and that there was nothing we could have done to save her.  I created a CD of songs that I had planned to share with Hailey.  They were songs that were special to me, made me think of her or contained lessons that I know she would need to learn in her life (I’ll include the list of songs at the end of this article).

 

The biggest frustration for my wife and I is that there is very little information about Neo-Natal Leukemia out there.  It is and extremely rare, and extremely deadly disease.  The mortality rate is between 96 and 98 percent.  The low rate of occurrence and survival makes it an extremely difficult disease to study.  The little that they do know is that it is not a hereditary disease, which is something we have taken some solace in.

 

My little girl is gone from me, and my world is very slowly returning back to some semblance of order, but I know it will never be the same.  Some day in the near future the lives of my wife and I will some back in to focus and we’ll try to have another child, but the waiting until then is one of the toughest things either of us ever hope to have to do.

 

 

Hailey Thompson Swett’s CD

 

01 – “With Arms Wide Open” by Creed

02 – “Baby Mine” by Alison Krauss

03 – “When You Dream” by Barenaked Ladies

04 – “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)” by John Lennon

05 – “Garden Party” by Rick Nelson

06 – “Standing Outside the Fire” by Garth Brooks

07 – “Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns & Roses

08 – “Higher” by Creed

09 – “Imagine” by John Lennon

10 – “Lightning Crashes” by Live

11 – “You’ll Be In My Heart” by Phil Collins

12 – “Follow Your Daughter Home” by The Guess Who

13 – “Young Boy” by Paul McCartney

14 – “Change the World” by Eric Clapton

15 – “The Flying Sequence & Can You Read My Mind” by John Williams