Asher Isaac

I study a lot of plane crashes as part of my graduate work in aviation safety. Sometimes the thing that gets me about a lot of these cases is how hopelessly senseless they were – nothing could have been prevented, no one knew what terrible tragedy awaited them.

In the crash of United Airlines Flight 232, the aircraft lost hydraulic power to all three hyd systems caused by a microscopic metallurgical defect within one of the fan blades of the aircraft’s #2 engine. This defect caused the blade to slowly, slowly crack, over years, over hundreds of thousands of hours of use. Finally while in flight, the crack gave way, the blade failed, and debris exploded outward from the doomed engine. From the flight deck, the captain and first officer responded with complete shock – this is not supposed to happen, the aircraft is designed with three redundancies within the hydraulic system – and yet, there they were, with an aircraft flying out of their control.

The two men, accompanied by a second officer and a passenger who worked as a check airman with United, struggled to manipulate the aircraft’s throttles to implement any sort of control on the flight path. The men knew there were 296 people onboard that aircraft, 52 of them children. They fought and used every piloting skill and instinct they had to bring the aircraft down safely, but with only a few feet left before landing, the aircraft’s right wing dipped and struck the ground, causing the aircraft to tumble onto the runway that would have served as its savior. The aircraft broke to pieces, with the forward cockpit section becoming detached and separated from the main wreckage.

Emergency crews didn’t at first recognize the crumpled mess of metal as being the cockpit, and did not know that there were four men alive inside. Four men who just endured hell to save the lives of the 296. For thirty-five minutes, those men were entombed in the twisted cockpit. They were finally rescued, and all four survived.

This may seem like a strange and macabre way to introduce a post that talks about the loss of my son. My brain is so linear that in a time like this, it goes through its indices to find anything similar that rings true, anything that can help navigate through the terror and the guilt. The crash of UA 232 feels so much like what is happening in my life that to break it down into historical, investigative terms helps me to make the linkages to one tragedy that no one could have seen coming to another.

On June 6^th, my husband and I found out that our months-long endeavor to conceive was successful. I had tracked all the things you track and peed on all the things you pee on. That morning, I had another negative pregnancy test and thought, “well, maybe next month.” But I came back a little while later and saw the test strip on the trash heap showing two definite lines. I took another one and watched it like a hawk and saw one faint line and one control line. I showed my best friend and asked if it could be a fluke, or if I could have some kind of tumor or something that’s producing those hormones. I called the doctor to schedule a blood test and went in that afternoon.

The next day, I got a call – I was standing in my kitchen, I was in the middle of hanging pictures – and the nurse said, “your pregnancy test was positive.” And I said, “Positive? As in, I’m pregnant?” and she said yes. I hung up, fell to my knees, and sobbed with gratitude. I never thought I would be chosen for motherhood, I never thought I deserved it. I cried and thanked God for choosing me to carry this child.

We went for our first ultrasound a month later, when I was eight weeks pregnant. My little gummy bear was there, clear as day, and I laughed when I saw the flow of umbilical blood coming and going. I said to the tech, “guess I’d better stop smoking crack now!” We couldn’t hear the heartbeat yet, but we saw it, and me and my husband cried. We got our printout and came home and ate Taco Bell giddy at what was to come, the wonderful changes that were coming to our lives.

A month later, we went in for a follow-up ultrasound to get a better idea of the gestational age. Me and John planned to get breakfast and coffee afterwards, expecting to bounce out of there the happy parents-to-be that we were. The ultrasound started off perfectly and my child looked like a child! We could see the head and the limbs and my kid was rolling and kicking like a real baby. We heard the heartbeat for the first time and sobbed, it was so strong and perfect. Then the tech said she would be right back and went to retrieve the doctor.

The doctor came in and said they found an abnormality with the baby’s head and we were being referred to a high-risk maternal specialist. He didn’t want to speculate or say anything more because he didn’t see this issue often enough and didn’t want to scare us or give us false hope. We had blood work done to test for Trisomy 13, 18, and 21, and we began to wait for the call from the high-risk doctors scheduling our appointment.

A week later, we got the results of the blood work back, no Trisomy, and it’s a boy! No trisomy meant that our hopes may be true of the abnormality in the baby’s head being something innocuous like remnants of the yolk sac that would go away on its own.

Normal pregnancy joy and optimism

The appointment at the high-risk facility came two agonizing weeks later when I was 15 weeks pregnant, in the golden second trimester when fetal loss was supposed to drop right off to nothing. Me and John had been talking to the baby hoping that it was just the yolk sac that hadn’t yet dissolved. We walked into that appointment with faith that we would walk out of there with an all-clear, “your baby is fine,” and resume a normal pregnancy. We said we would laugh about this with our kid someday.

I laid in the dark ultrasound room and we began the scan. From the monitor on the wall behind the tech, I knew, I instantly knew that something was very wrong with my son. I could see that it wasn’t a yolk sac on his head, that it was structural. I saw his brain outside of his little head. I saw his belly that was riddled with cysts. I saw all of this was wrong with my poor son. We tried to get a heartbeat, but there was none.

The doctor came in to talk to me and my husband and told us that the symptoms they saw – the occipital encephalocele, the multicystic dysplastic kidneys, the cleft lip and palate, and the clubbed feet, were all markers for trisomy 13, that my son was “incompatible with life,” that he wouldn’t have lived more than a few weeks, that she was so sorry. She left the room and me and John held each other and sobbed. My memory of that room is like a movie where the walls fall away and the wind kicks up like a hurricane. In my memory, we are falling, we are being pulled under this Earth.

We wiped our tears and walked down the hallway to the genetic counselor. One of the kindest people I have ever met, she gave us her condolences, and then she went over my son’s symptoms. She said the blood work we did at the doctor’s a few weeks ago was only 92% accurate in catching Trisomy 13, but she didn’t think it was Trisomy 13, she thought it was something called Meckel-Gruber syndrome, that all his symptoms matched. This is devastating news to me and John. If it was Trisomy, the chances of our next child being struck with this affliction was so rare – 1 in 10,000 births, or 1 in 20,000 births depending on circumstances. But Meckel-Gruber is a syndrome for which John and I both would have to be carriers for, actively expressing the recessive gene that caused my son this agony. This also means that forever, we will only have a 75% chance of having a healthy child.

The doctors wanted to do as many tests as possible to try to narrow down the diagnosis, knowing the impact it will have on future pregnancies. The next day, I went back to the high-risk center to have a coriolus villus sampling (CVS) test performed. This test required me to be laying down while a doctor inserted a needle into my abdomen to retrieve cells from the baby’s placenta. The test felt like I was being punctured and ripped apart at the seams, and my poor husband almost sobbed watching it happen to me. But we had to do it.

We were scheduled for surgery on Monday, five days after all the air was sucked out of our world. My son’s little body would have to be surgically removed since I was in my second trimester and he was nearly four inches long. The initial bomb of “incompatible with life” should have been the only one – should have been the only awful thing my husband and I had to deal with. But it wasn’t. We learned that our son, our wanted son, was dead, and then we would have to have awful tests done on us, and then I would have to have surgery, and then we would have to make burial arrangements, and all of this was to be paid out of pocket.

On Monday, we packed up the car for our 2.5-hour road trip to Richmond, Virginia, the closest medical facility that could perform the surgery. We arrived and met the team who would be extracting my son’s little body. We went over release of remains and internment and pain management and all the awful things you’re not supposed to be talking about when you’re fifteen weeks pregnant, when your belly has just started to reveal your secret. The procedure was scheduled for the next day.

My husband and I spent that night at a hotel in the city. We cuddled, we talked to the baby, we cried, we apologized a million times. We drew the shades and laid in bed and wished that we were children who could close their eyes and make it all go away.

The following day we reported at the hospital early in the morning and I got changed into a gown and had my skin sterilized. I sat alone in a little room hooked up to an IV, waiting for my turn in the operating room. John was able to sit with me for a bit, and the angel of mercy nurse made sure I was given 2 milligrams of Xanax. I was dilated for the procedure.

Doctors and nurses came in and talked to us, some cried, all apologized for what we were going through. I was grateful for the medication and that I didn’t feel the heavy weight of fear and sadness that had been my cloak in the preceding days. Then, it was my turn. I barely remember this.

I remember the operating room looked just like something out of an abduction story. My arms were strapped down. Giant surgical lights looked down on me. I don’t remember the administration of anesthetic. I remember napping peacefully, gloriously. Then I remember waking up and cracking a joke that it sounded like the doctor was using a meat carver down there. I’m an asshole, even when sedated. Someone was holding my hand at all times. I don’t remember the procedure ending. I remember it being over and looking over at our goddess of a nurse, the woman who had been our advocate and protector in that awful time, who was handling my son’s remains, and she made a face like “Angela please don’t look.” I remember there was a lot of blood.

I was wheeled back to this recovery hallway and my husband was soon by my side looking relieved and so sad. I don’t remember getting dressed. I remember our nurse saying that she would meet me at the cemetery with my son’s remains.

I was put into a wheelchair and brought downstairs to my car, the car we had purchased a week before to be a "safe car for when the baby comes." I don’t remember the drive to the cemetery. I remember arriving and seeing our goddess of a nurse standing with the rabbi who would be saying the prayers over my baby. We walked through the historical, beautiful cemetery, it was a gorgeous, sunny day. I saw the little hole that had been dug for my son. Our nurse handed me the tiny box containing his tiny body and the tiny blanket that I had knit for him, and I, his mother, lowered him down into the Earth. I took a shovel and heaped the first bit of dirt over my son’s remains. John followed. The rabbi said a prayer over my son, said a prayer for my grieving family, and said a prayer over me, the grieving mother. We watched the little hole being filled with Earth by the lovely man whose job it was to do these things. And we left.

And now, home, in the empty silence, I feel like those men who were in that crumpled flight deck, alone. We all endured hell and we all existed in the smoldering aftermath of our agony. We were all handed a circumstance that we didn’t want. That we were forced to do our best to manage. That left us scarred, that left us with the burden of an unimaginable guilt. That left us with the feelings that if only, if only, things would have been different.

I am grateful for the fifteen weeks I got to spend with my son. I am grateful for the hope and the promise his life brought to mine. I am grateful that my cravings included green tea Kit Kats from Japan, Tim Tams from Australia, hummus, and his mama’s sauce and that my son was exposed to these lovely things during his short life. I am grateful that my son was with us when we watched the Red Sox play at Fenway. I am grateful that in his short life, my son traveled to Boston, to Houston, to Williamsburg. I am grateful that I stayed in school while I was in the throes of morning sickness, that my son was exposed to my learning and my tenacity. I am grateful to have carried him. I am grateful for every song I ever sang to him. I am grateful that he knew my heartbeat.

I am also grateful for the kindnesses that my husband and I received during this awful time. Old friends sent us messages of love and support. New friends expressed condolences and heartfelt sympathies. My family and John’s coworkers rallied to help us offset the costs of the surgery. Strangers offered us books, services, their time, anything to help make this time less awful for us. Our medical team treated us, and our son, with unprecedented love and compassion. I have always believed that the human heart is inherently good, wants to do good by its very nature. I know that awful things happen and most of the time there’s no good reason for it. But seeing the response shown to me and my husband in the worst time in our lives gives me so much hope, and gives me so much comfort that we are living in a truly beautiful world.

We will always miss our son, Asher Isaac, and we will talk about him. I know it makes people sad to be around The Lady With the Dead Baby, but I promise you, if I lock myself in a room and cry my eyes out, you won’t see it. You will see the strength of a woman who has chosen to get out of bed in the morning. You won’t have to hide your own healthy babies or your life’s own joys, because my capacity for love has not been buried in that same small patch of Earth along with my son. So many families have endured the tragic loss of a child, and so many won’t talk about it because it “makes people feel weird.” One of my dearest friends lost her daughter, Kenley, in the eighth month of her pregnancy, and through her blog One Pink Balloon, she taught me how to speak and advocate for these babies and for these mothers. And to say the names of the loved, wanted, missed children who we lost too soon. I encourage you to please do the same.

Thank you for reading the story of my son’s life. Thank you for hurting as we hurt. Thank you for being there to help us up when we’re ready. Thank you, all of you, for making us feel less alone.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, O!
The difference to me! - "Lucy," by William Wordsworth