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Willower: Rewriting Life After Unimaginable Loss was published on October 17 (2023). Which, and this wasn’t planned, happened to be Reggie’s birthday (10/17/2003). Reggie who? Reggie Jackson Little Dude, that’s who—Sam’s puppy.
Funny story: Once, while in Tampa to see a Yankee spring training game, we saw the Reggie Jackson in the hotel lobby. Excited, David said hello to him and then, pointing to the boys and the skinny pigeon-toed Chihuahua standing with them, proceeded to tell Mr. Jackson that we named our dog after him. (Insert head smack emoji here.) I wanted to hide. It was a pretty awkward moment. I mean, if we had named our son after him, but . . . that funny-looking knock-kneed dog?
about this chapter
In Chapter 2. Living normally, we travel to Boston Children’s Hospital (May 2003) after deciding that BCH has the best “picture taker” in the world.
only time will tell
After his MRI, Sam is in the recovery room, wide awake, sitting up, licking an orange Popsicle, flirting with his orange lips, talking and laughing with his new friends, an audience of women in blue scrubs surrounding his bed.
Meanwhile, David and I meet with two cardiologists, and I ask questions.What kind of mass is this? Can he live with it? For how long? Are there any possible treatments? Might it go away? What happens next?
The doctor shakes his head and answers with apologies. “Only time will tell.”
(from Chapter 2. Living normally, a pinhole)Uncertainty was my pinhole of light. An uncertain future was still a future. This was the loophole I’d found.
The other specialist thinks, statistically, it’s more likely, that the mass is HCM, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. “Go home and live your lives normally,” he tell us. “Eighty percent of cardiomyopathy patients lead fairly normal lives.”
What happens to the twenty percent? How do they live? I want to ask but don’t.
Before leaving Boston, we spend a few days sightseeing. We ride on the subway, the T. We go to the Boston Children’s Museum and the New England Aquarium. We eat lobster. On our last night there, David takes Sammy to a Red Sox game, which is televised, so I see and hear him on the TV in our hotel room. Right behind the catcher, there’s my little boy, all heart, jumping, cheering, and screaming for the Sox, having the time of his life.
get a puppy
I circle the ad in the paper: Puppies for sale.
In the nice lady’s kitchen, there’s an assortment of colors: whites, grays, various shades of brown from dark to light gold. Sam, wide-eyed, sits on the floor in the middle of the kitchen surrounded by eight puppies.
“There are nine to choose from,” the nice lady points out.
Number nine is sitting on the periphery, watching, waiting politely. When he sees an opening in the crowd, he inches forward and gently places his paw on Sam’s knee: Pick me, please. “Him.” Sam points to the quiet one. “That’s the one I would pick.”
The nice lady proceeds to tell me, in a sweet Southern drawl, about her first dog—and her childhood illness. “I lived in and out of hospitals, and when my mother put that puppy in bed with me, it saved my life.”
(from Chapter 2. Living normally, a puppy)I wanted to be sold; to believe this shy little dog might play a key role in the medical miracle I was praying for. Maybe one day, when Sam was much, much older, he would tell that same story: And when my mother put that puppy in bed with me, it saved my life.
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