Birthdays

Today, 50 years ago, August 2, 1961, our daughter, Diana Jean, was born. She was a month premature and weighed just a little over 4 pounds. I remember how beautiful she was, with dark, curly hair and a pretty face. She had to stay in the hospital nursery for two and a half weeks and, in those days, they wouldn't even let you touch or hold the babies. Sometimes when I'd go to look at her through the glass, they wouldn't even open the curtains for me and I'd leave crying. We got to bring her home when she weighed 5 lbs. I'd only had experience with boys and had to learn how to take care of little girls. She hated bath time and would cry the whole time. John started first grade around the end of August and, because I didn't have anyone to leave Diana Jean, took her with me to Sunset School to get John enrolled. I learned later that a virus was going around and both John and Diana Jean caught it. She was sick all of the Labor Day weekend and had a high temperature. I took her to the doctor on Friday and he wasn't very concerned; just gave her a shot and told me to bring her back the next Tuesday. She was fussy and crying on Monday night but finally went to sleep around midnight. I put her in the little bassinet next to our bed and went to sleep myself. When I woke the next morning, the first thing I did was check on her and to my horror, found that she had stopped breathing sometime in the night. We called the ambulance and they tried to resuccitate her but had no luck. Bob went with them to the hospital, leaving me at home with John (6 years old) and Scott (2 & 1/2). I walked the floor, crying all the time as I had no hope that she would be okay. Dr. Miner came back home with Bob and sat with me at the kitchen table. He blamed himself, saying he should have put her in the hospital when he saw her the week before. He and another doctor did an autopsy and found that she had the Coxsackie Virus and pneumonia which overwhelmed her and caused her death. I can remember being at the cemetery surrounded by friends and family and the hot sun bearing down on all of us and how hard it was to get through the service. It takes a long time to get over losing someone you love and you wonder "why" it had to happen. Eventually the bad memories go away and you have only the good and sweet memories of your little one. Today I realized that President Obama was born near the same day (he was born on August 4, 1961) as Diana Jean and is the same age as she would have been - 50. How different all our lives would have been had she lived and he had not!!!