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Jordan was conceived one week after I had miscarried. He was born on December 19, 1997. He weighed 8 pounds and 12 ounces. He was 21 ¼ inches long. When Jordan was going through the birth canal, the umbilical cord wrapped around his little neck and he was born passed out. The nurses went to work right away. Within a few seconds he was screaming and the nurse said he had swallowed meconium and would be taken to NICU to be monitored. I could go up to see him when I was able, so away he went. Jordan came home three days later.
Jordan has an older sister who was seven years old at the time. She loves him sooo much. I never thought it would be possible to witness such a sight. Over the next two years we moved a lot trying to figure out where we belonged. Jordan was always eager to learn. When Jordan was 7 ½ months old he took his first steps. Jordan always loved the family pets. The dogs were named Zeus, TJ, and Nala. The cats were named Tigger, Salem, Little Bit, and Annie. In the year 2001 we got baby chicks and he loved those too. He loved playing with the animals all the time.
Jordan loved the water. He was always found playing in a mud puddle after a rain. He feared nothing. He loved music of all kinds and was always dancing around. His biggest accomplishment before his first birthday was climbing. When he figured out how to do this that was it and he was everywhere all the time.
Jordan got his first pair of boots during his second year of life. The first time he wasn’t sure about them and the second time he put them on he fell in love with them. He went everywhere in those things. Shortly after that he got his first cowboy hat and his toy rifle that he called his “pow-pow”. He also had the plastic sheriff’s badge and the plastic pistols that went in his holster. Jordan loved to “pow-pow” everyone and everything. He would go to the edge of the property and would tell the cat, Little Bit that he shouldn’t go into the woods because the “roar-roar” would get him. (He couldn’t say monster so he would make the sound effects of a roar). Of course Little Bit would look at Jordan like he understood perfectly. It was a sight that we all enjoyed. Jordan went everywhere with his guns, hat, and boots. Sometimes that is all he had on was just the boots, hat, and his “pow-pow”.
There for a time I couldn’t put anything on him but his jeans. He would cry and cry until he could have them, even if it was 100 degrees outside. He would insist on having his jeans on. When he started going to daycare we had to take the toy guns away and he didn’t like that very much either. But once he got inside and mom and dad were gone he would be okay and play with the others. Jordan didn’t like to be told he couldn’t do something. He was hot headed like his father, but once it was out of his system he was fine. He was a very strong willed little boy. It only took him once to learn something.
Jordan loved movies especially, Disney movies. His favorites were Buzz and Woody, Scooby Doo, El Dorado and Jurassic Park. He would call the dinosaurs “nino”. But the one he would try to stay up all night and watch was a western called The Good and The Bad and The Ugly. He learned quickly how to rewind and how to put a tape in and out. He loved watching movies with his sister or playing outside with her. When they weren’t doing that they would be fighting like typical brother and sister.
Jordan loved to pick me flowers. He was always bringing me sunflowers and daisies, and any others that he would find. He would even pick the roses off my rose bush or my mothers to bring to me. He was so romantic like that.
The most memorable thing that I remember about my little man was that he loved to lie next to me in bed at night. He would never want to sleep in his bed and if he did, by morning he was next to me again. For the most part he slept between me and his father. Jordan loved to snuggle. He was very affectionate and loved to give kisses and bear hugs. He would make me see stars, he would hug so tight. He could walk into the room where he saw his father and me fighting and would walk between us. One time he kicked his father in the knee and said leave my mommy alone and buried his head into my leg. That’s my little man, my hero!
Jordan was all cowboy! I always knew that I would be the mom in the stands at a rodeo with my hands over my eyes while he rode that bare bronc or that bull. He was the one that I saw being athletic, maybe on the football team. He was always running everywhere. He loved to run and play with the dogs and they loved playing with him.
The day that Jordan was called home was a hard day. One of his first cousin had died from an accidental drowning at a lake in another state just one week earlier. She had been buried the day before Jordan died. My parents and all my family that lived near us were on their way back home. Where we lived we had to bring water in because we had not put a well in yet. So we would go about half a mile behind us to our parent’s home to get water. That day Jordan wanted to run to “momo and pop’s house”. So I let him run about half the way there and then made him get in the truck. He didn’t want to get into the truck so he got mad at me and was kicking the door trying to get out. When I got to my parents I saw that they were home from their trip and Jordan ran to the swing yelling he was mad at mommy. My daughter decided to go inside and see my mom and my dad was already busy working on something in his shop. Jordan was always never to far from me so I knew he was okay. If he couldn’t see someone he would get under foot so you knew he was there. I went inside to say hi to my mom and then came back out and Jordan was right there playing like he had been when I went inside. He didn’t want to come inside because he was still mad at me. The next thing I remember was telling my daughter to go outside and play with him. I followed her out the door when she said he wasn’t in the front yard. I went out the back door and he was making his rounds around the house. He went around one side and I went around the other. That is when the search started about 7:30 in the evening. By the time Jordan was found it was the next day.
People had come out of the woodwork from the surrounding counties to help look. Some brought their ATVs and some their horses. Jordan was found the next day in the river down below my parent’s house. It was about a mile a way. My mom and sister-in-law and brother were all there. Mom swam out and pulled him from the water. I had just been down there about 50 yards up river from where mom had found him. She held him till the coroner took him from her. When mom got back to me at the camp where everyone was she looked at me and said ‘I couldn’t save him baby, I am so sorry, I couldn’t save him.”
Jordan’s father dropped to his knees and I stood there in utter shock. What I was hearing wasn’t true this had to be a nightmare. I was numb. They took him to the funeral home and that is where I was able to see him. They laid a sheet around his little body because he had taken off his pants to go potty and those were found on the ground. When I picked him up, I held him and it was like he was asleep in my arms. I couldn’t believe he was gone, it just wasn’t possible. As I looked at him I cried and tears came from his sleeping eyes; everyone there saw this and was in awe. His father picked him out of my arms and put his precious head on his shoulders and his little body let out a groan. It was all we could do not to totally loose it right then.
Jordan was laid to rest and the entire town of Bandera, Texas it seemed had shown up to “Celebrate His Life.” All the fire trucks were there and I asked them to lead us from the church to the cemetery because I knew that Jordan would have loved to be in the front seat of those fire trucks. He was laid to rest one week later in his favorite boots, jeans, and cowboy hat. He held a hot wheel car in his hand. With a kiss from his mommy on his forehead he went to heaven to be with the Lord.
Midi Selection~Candle In The Wind~
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