The natural order

Adapted from remarks at the funeral service for infant Alexander Wynne-Markham, given by Chaplain Kathleen Blake Thompson, and a postscript, written two years later. July 16, 1999 / June 2001

How deeply I wish we had met under different circumstances.

Rather than in my capacity as a chaplain at Yale-New Haven Hospital, I might have met Connie, Daniel and Alexander in line at the local bakery or at the wonderful bookstore in Madison. I would have ooed and ahhed at Alexander’s adorable face and his bright smile. We might have swapped parenting stories and experiences. Everything would have seemed to be in the natural order of things.

But sadly, I met this wonderful family on their most tragic of days. When the natural order of things had been turned upside down. A young child was dying and parents were going to have to live on. This is not the way things ought to be.

As the most horrific drama any parent or grandparent can imagine was unfolding in their lives, Alexander, Connie, Daniel, Connie’s mother Joan and father Bill and I were thrown together in a six-hour journey which began moments before Alexander’s death and carried through an entire day of shock, disbelief, counter-shocks and waves of grief and sorrow that I pray none of us will ever have to endure again.

On July 12, 1999, in the Pediatric Emergency Department, Connie and I watched as doctors and nurses used every tool at their command to try and resuscitate Alexander. The doctors’ eyes were dry, their backs were straight, their minds focused on the task at hand. A simple bee sting. Surely there must be something they can do to save this child. Standing beside Connie as they were working, I was in awe of her strength, felt the depth of her fear and yet marveled at her ability to stand, to breathe and to pray.

When all the doctors’ tools had failed, they had to concede defeat. They let Connie and me into the trauma room, wrapped Alexander in a coverlet and gave him to his mother. Then, all the doctors and nurses on the large trauma team moved aside, out of the room. As they did so, their shoulders drooped in surrender. As they passed by me, their tears glistened under the glare of trauma room lights.

I don’t know if Connie was aware of this, but as she was sitting and rocking Alexander, she said to me that if she just held him, he wouldn’t really be gone. And as she rocked, as she was trying to grasp the tiniest glimpse of the incomprehensible idea that her child was dead, as she rocked in shock and pain and horror, I glanced around the trauma suite.

I could see through the glass divider where Connie and I had watched from the other side. I could see down the hallway. Opposite us, I could glimpse the triage desk. And everywhere I looked, I saw pair after pair of eyes filling and overflowing with tears. The chief trauma physicians, the residents, the interns, the charge nurses, the nurse assistants, EMTs, the desk clerk—everyone sharing in that moment with Connie and me the incomprehensible tragedy that this young life had ended so unjustly. This was the natural order of things: that we brothers and sisters on this earth mourn such a senseless tragedy. I am proud of the compassion of the staff I witnessed on that day.

The true miracle of the day was the Wynne-Markham family. Alexander’s father, Daniel, was in New York at the time of Alexander’s death, as was Bill, his grandfather. Joan, his grandmother, was stuck in a massive traffic jam trying to get into New Haven from Guilford. Connie, holding Alexander, and I waited in the hospital’s bereavement room, Yale-New Haven’s special space for families to be alone and grieve their immediate loss with the deceased present. At each new family member’s arrival, the horror and pain of the loss was experienced anew. Connie’s mother, Joan, finally broke free of traffic to be the next to arrive—her only grandchild, gone. Daniel, having hired a helicopter out of New York City arrived, distraught and inconsolable. Finally five hours or so later, grandfather Bill arrived from Westchester.

As we banded and bonded together over these six hours, I saw the courage and strength that Connie had prayed for being granted to her, and to her husband, and to her parents. The ED staff allowed the family as much time as needed to become ready to let Alexander’s body be taken away. By the time they did so, it was clear to me that the answer to the family’s prayers, not for the miracle of Alexander’s life, but at least for the strength to endure, had been, and would continue to be, granted. They would go on, and they would lead lives worthy of the honor and gift of having known their beloved Alexander.

Postscript – June 2001

After officiating at Alexander’s funeral in July of 1999, Alexander’s family and I kept in touch via notes and letters. The experience with Alexander’s family confirmed my call to chaplaincy, and when my rotation at Yale-New Haven and my master of divinity degree at Yale was completed, my ordination into chaplaincy was held in June 2002. I sent an invitation to the family living in New York, more to let them know about the event than to expect their attendance.

At a ceremony in June 2001 where she took her vows of ministry, Rev. Kathleen Blake Thompson is reunited with Alexander's family—Daniel, holding new baby Isabella, and Connie.

As I was taking my vows of ministry in the First Congregational Church of Madison, I heard a baby crying out from the back of the church. I smiled at what a happy sound that was on such a happy day. Later, at the reception, a young man holding a newborn infant walked up to shake my hand. He was beaming from one ear to the other. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place the face. He stepped up close and said, “Kathleen, it’s Daniel—Alexander’s father! And this is our new daughter, Isabella!”

Ecstatic, I hugged Daniel and Isabella just as Connie and her parents walked up. Reunited for the first time since that day in July 1999, we embraced and exchanged mutual warm wishes and congratulations. As they were walking away, I finally realized something and blurted it out, “Daniel,” I smiled, “I didn’t recognize you because you were smiling!”

And this is the natural order of things:

On any given day, through a confluence of events, a group of strangers can find themselves thrown together in the Emergency Department and form a bond that will carry them through that crisis and even back to triumphant life.

Rev. Kathleen Blake Thompson
Chaplain at High Watch Farm
Chaplain at Leeway, Inc.
On-call Chaplain, DORM, YNHH