born, we became a family. With a second child on the way, we could begin
to see the outlines of the future—family portraits, a house fil ed with the
joyful noise of childhood, two kids checking their stockings on Christmas
morning. Then two months into the pregnancy, Sonja lost the baby, and our
misty-edged dreams popped like soap bubbles. Grief consumed Sonja.
The reality of a child lost, one we would never know. An empty space
where there wasn’t one before.
We were eager to try again, but we worried about whether we would be
able to have another child, multiplying our misery. A few months later,
Sonja became pregnant again. Her early prenatal checkups revealed a
healthy, growing baby. Stil , we hung on a bit loosely, a little afraid to fal in
love with this new child as we had the one we had lost. But forty weeks
later, on May 19, 1999, Colton Todd Burpo arrived and we fel head over
heels. For Sonja, this little boy was an even more special gift directly from
the hand of a loving, heavenly Father.
Now, as I watched her face above Colton’s pale form, I could see terrible
questions forming in her mind: What are you doing, God? Are you going
to take this child too?
Colton’s face appeared pinched and pale, his face a tiny moon in the
stark hal way. The shadows around his eyes had deepened into dark,
purple hol ows. He wasn’t screaming anymore, or even crying. He was just
. . . stil .
Again it reminded me of those dying patients I had seen hovering on the
threshold between earth and eternity. Tears fil ed my eyes, blurring the
image of my son like rain on a windowpane. Sonja looked up at me, her
own tears streaming. “I think this is it,” she said.
EIGHT
RAGING AT GOD
Five minutes later, a white-coated man emerged from the imaging lab. I
don’t remember his name, but I remember that his name tag said
“Radiologist.”
“Your son has a ruptured appendix,” he said. “He needs emergency
surgery. They’re ready for you in surgical prep now. Fol ow me.”
Astonished, Sonja and I fel in behind him. Heat surged in my temples. A
burst appendix? Hadn’t the doctor in Imperial ruled that out?
In the surgical prep room, Sonja laid Colton on a gurney, kissed his
forehead, and stepped away as a nurse closed in with an IV bag and a
needle. Immediately, Colton began to scream and thrash. I stood at my
son’s head and held his shoulders down, trying to soothe him with my
voice. Sonja returned to Colton’s side, crying openly as she kept trying to
brace his left arm and leg with her body.
When I looked up, the prep room was crowded with men and women in
white coats and scrubs. “The surgeon is here,” one of them said, gently. “If
you’l step out and talk with him, we’l take over in here.”
Reluctantly, we stepped through the curtain, Colton screaming,
“Pleeease, Daddy! Don’t go!”
In the hal way, Dr. Timothy O’Hol eran waited for us. Dr. O’Hol eran was
the doctor who had performed the mastectomy on me four months earlier.
Now his features were set in grim horizontal lines.
He didn’t waste words. “Colton’s appendix has ruptured. He’s not in
good shape. We’re going to go in and try to clean him out.”
On the other side of the curtain, Colton was stil screaming. “Daddy!
Daaadd-eeee!”
Gritting my teeth, I shut out the sound and tried to focus on the doctor.
“We asked about a burst appendix in Imperial,” Sonja said. “They ruled it
out.”
My brain skipped over the past and looked toward the future, angling for
hope. “How do you think he’l do?” I said.
“We’ve got to go in and clean him out. We’l know more when we open
him up.”
The spaces between his words rang in my ears like alarm bel s as
Colton’s screams rang down the hal s. In response to a direct question, the
doctor had specifical y not given us any assurances. In fact, the only thing
he had said about Colton was that he was in bad shape. My mind flashed
back to the moment Sonja cal ed me in Greeley from Imperial to tel me
Colton’s fever had broken, and that they were on their way. What had
seemed like the end of a stomach flu had more likely been the first sign of
a ruptured appendix. That meant poison had been fil ing our little boy’s
bel y for five days. That tal y explained the shadow of death we saw on him
now. And it explained why Dr. O’Hol eran had not offered us any hope.
The doctor nodded toward the noise spil ing from the prep room. “I think
it’l work better if we take him back to surgery and sedate him, then put in
the IV.”
He stepped over to the curtain and I heard him give the order. A few
moments later, two nurses wheeled the gurney through the curtain, and I
saw Colton writhing. He twisted his tiny form, turning his head until he
locked onto me with his sunken eyes. “Daddy! Don’t let them take meeee!”
Remember when I said pastors don’t have the luxury of losing it? I was
about to lose it, and I had to get away. After talking to the doctor and then
scribbling my name on what seemed to be hundreds of insurance forms,
nearly running, I found a smal room with a door, ducked in, and slammed it
shut behind me. My heart raced. I couldn’t get my breath. Desperation,
anger, and frustration washed over me in waves that seemed to squeeze
away my breath.
When everybody’s freaking out, they al look to Dad— especial y when
Dad’s a pastor. Now I was final y in a room where no one was looking at
me, and I began raging at God.
“Where are you? Is this how you treat your pastors?! Is it even worth it to
serve you?”
Back and forth, I paced the room, which seemed to close in on me,
shrinking as surely as Colton’s options were shrinking. Over and over a
single image assaulted me: Colton being wheeled away, his arms
stretched out, screaming for me to save him.
That’s when it hit me. We waited too long. I might never see my son
alive again.
Tears of rage flooded my eyes, spil ed onto my cheeks. “After the leg,
the kidney stones, the mastectomy, this is how you’re going to let me
celebrate the end of my time of testing?” I yel ed at God. “You’re going to
take my son?”
NINE
MINUTES LIKE GLACIERS
Fifteen minutes later, maybe more, I emerged from that room dry-eyed. It
had been the first time I’d real y been alone since the whole ordeal began. I
had wanted to be strong for Sonja, a husband strong for his wife. I found
her in the waiting room, using her last drops of cel phone battery to cal
friends and family. I hugged her and held her as she cried into my shirt until
it stuck to my chest. I used what little battery was left on my cel phone to
cal Terri, my secretary, who would in turn activate the prayer chain at
church. This was not a ritual cal . I was desperate for prayer, desperate that
other believers would bang on the gates of heaven and beg for the life of
our son.
Pastors are supposed to b
e unshakable pil ars of faith, right? But at that
moment, my faith was hanging by a tattered thread and fraying fast. I
thought of the times where the Scripture says that God answered the
prayers, not of the sick or dying, but of the friends of the sick or dying—the
paralytic, for example. It was when Jesus saw the faith of the man’s friends
that he told the paralytic, “Get up, take your mat and go home.”1 At that
moment, I needed to borrow the strength and faith of some other believers.
After I hung up with Terri, Sonja and I sat together and prayed, afraid to
hope and afraid not to.
Time dragged, the minutes moving at the speed of glaciers. Between
muted conversations and smal talk, the waiting room ticked with a
pregnant silence.
Ninety minutes later, a female nurse in purple scrubs, a surgical mask
dangling from her neck, stepped into the waiting room. “Is Colton’s father
here?”
The tone of her voice, and the fact that it was a nurse and not Dr.
O’Hol eran, sent a surge of hope through my body.
Maybe God is being gracious despite our stupidity. Maybe he’s going
to give us another day, another chance.
I stood. “I’m Colton’s dad.”
“Mr. Burpo, can you come back? Colton’s out of surgery, but we can’t
calm him down. He’s stil screaming, and he’s screaming for you.”
When they were wheeling Colton away, I couldn’t bear his screams.
Now, suddenly, I wanted to hear his screams more than I’d ever wanted to
hear anything in my life. To me, they would be a beautiful sound.
Sonja and I gathered up our things and fol owed the nurse back through
the wide double doors that led to the surgical ward. We didn’t make it to
the recovery room but met a pair of nurses wheeling Colton through the
hal way on a gurney. He was alert, and I could tel he’d been looking for me.
My first reaction was to try to get as close as I could to him; I think I
would’ve climbed on the gurney with him if I hadn’t thought the nurses might
feel a little put out.
The nurses stopped long enough for Sonja and I each to plant a kiss on
Colton’s little face, which stil looked pale and drawn. “Hey, buddy, how you
doin’?” I said.
“Hi, Mommy. Hi, Daddy.” The ghost of a smile warmed his face.
The nurses got the gurney under way again, and a few minutes and an
elevator ride later, Colton was settled into a narrow hospital room at the
end of a long corridor. Sonja stepped out of the room for a moment to take
care of some paperwork at the nurse’s station, and I stayed behind, sitting
next to Colton’s bed in one of those mesh-covered rockers, drinking in my
son’s aliveness.
A smal child looks even smal er in a hospital bed built for grown-ups. At
under forty pounds, Colton’s body barely raised the sheet. His feet reached
no more than a third of the way down the bed. Dark rings stil circled his
eyes, but it seemed to me that the blue of his eyes shone brighter than two
hours before.
“Daddy?” Colton looked at me earnestly.
“What?”
He gazed at me and didn’t move his eyes from mine.
“Daddy, you know I almost died.”
Fear gripped me. Where did he hear that?
Had he overheard the medical staff talking? Had he heard something
the surgical team said, despite the anesthesia? Because we certainly
hadn’t said anything about his being close to death in front of him. Sonja
and I had feared he was at the brink, had known it after we learned his
appendix had been leaking poison into his system for five days. But we’d
been very careful not to say anything in front of Colton that would scare him.
My throat closed, the first sign of tears. Some people freak out when
their teenagers want to talk about sex. If you think that’s tough, try talking to
your preschooler about dying. Colton had been with me in nursing homes,
places where people gave their loved ones permission to let go of life. I
wasn’t about to give my son permission to quit. We weren’t out of the
woods yet, and I didn’t want him to think that death was an option.
I wil ed my voice to remain steady and smiled at my son. “You just think
about getting better, okay, buddy?”
“Okay, Daddy.”
“We’re here with you al the way. We’re praying for you.” I changed the
subject. “Now, what can we bring you? Do you want your action figures
from home?”
We hadn’t been in the room long when three members of our church
board arrived at the hospital. We were so grateful for that. Sometimes I
wonder, what do people do when they have no extended family and no
church? In times of crisis, where does their support come from? Cassie
stayed with Norma and Bryan in Imperial until my mother, Kay, could drive
up from Ulysses, Kansas. Bryan’s extended family lives in North Platte, and
they came to help us too. Our church gathering around us in the eye of the
storm would change the way Sonja and I approached pastoral visitation in
times of trial and grief. We were faithful about it before; now we’re militant.
Soon, Sonja came back into the room and not long after that, Dr.
O’Hol eran joined us. Colton lay quietly as the surgeon pul ed back the
sheet to show us the incision site, a horizontal line across the right side of
his tiny bel y. The wound was packed with blood-tinged gauze, and as he
began to remove it, Colton whimpered a bit in fear. I don’t think he could
feel it yet, since he was stil under the effects of the local anesthesia the
surgical team had applied to the incision site.
Colton’s insides were so contaminated with the poison of the ruptured
appendix that Dr. O’Hol eran had decided it was best to leave his incision
open so it could continue to drain.
Now the doctor spread the wound slightly.
“See that gray tissue?” he said. “That’s what happens to internal organs
when there’s an infection. Colton’s not going to be able to leave the
hospital until everything that’s gray in there turns pink.”
A length of plastic tubing protruded from each side of Colton’s
abdomen. At the end of each tube was what the doctor cal ed a “grenade.”
Clear plastic in color, they did look a little like grenades, but they were
actual y manual squeeze pumps. The next morning, Dr. O’Hol eran showed
us how to squeeze the grenades to drain pus from Colton’s abdomen and
then pack the opening with fresh gauze. For the next few days, Dr.
O’Hol eran would arrive each morning to check the wound and pack the
dressing. Colton screamed bloody murder during those visits and began to
associate the doctor with everything bad that was happening to him.
In the evenings, when the doctor wasn’t there, I had to drain the incision.
Prior to the surgery, Sonja had been on puke patrol for nearly a week and
since the surgery, at Colton’s bedside every minute. But draining the pus
was gory work and, for her, a bridge too far. Besides, it took at least three
adults to hold Colton down. So while I squeezed the grenades, Sonja
helped two nurses hold him, Sonja
whispering soothing words while Colton
screamed and screamed.
TEN
PRAYERS OF A MOST UNUSUAL KIND
For another week after the emergency appendectomy, Colton continued to
throw up, and we continued to pump poison out of his body twice a day