How a book Naomi brought home the day she suffered that cardiac arrest lead me to believe better days lay ahead.
Since Naomi suffered that devastating cardiac arrest, I started noticing things that would have normally escaped my attention. Actually, that unwanted "journey" we embarked on through what happened with Naomi started five days before the cardiac arrest; on Monday February 1, 2010. That day, I arrived at my office early in the morning and started humming a tune. It got stuck in my head and I kept humming it over and over again. Not just that Monday but all along until Friday. For five days it stuck like a shadow. Gradually, throughout the week, some words emerged: "Here comes the sun… Little darling… It’s all right”.
Then arrived that horrific Friday night when we rushed Naomi to the hospital. I was with her in the ambulance and I completely panicked. The entire trip I kept shouting: “Naomi! Naomi wake up!” I simply could not imagine losing her. When we arrived at the hospital, Naomi was rushed into the resuscitation room. I tried to follow but was not allowed in. They closed the doors and suddenly I found myself alone in a dimly lit hallway. Feeling the sharp, cold wind blowing in from outside, I shivered, looked down and saw I had no shoes on and that my socks were soaked from the rain.
Distressed and devastated, it was at that moment that I turned to God, pleading: “I know I never came to you before but please help Naomi. Please don’t let her die!”
A few days later, when things got really tough, I remembered the tune and wondered if Naomi, our little darling, would indeed be all right again. Could it be, perhaps, that despite what had happened, we would see light at the end of the tunnel? After that brief moment, I was sucked right back into our harsh reality and forgot about the tune.
It was really painful knowing that Naomi was in life-threatening condition and we could not even see her. She was alone in a room in the ICU and we were not allowed to be with her. I reckoned the only way I could sort of be in the room and comfort her was by recording my voice on the MP3 player I had been gifted a week earlier and having it placed next to her bed. That way she could at least hear my voice.
I left the hospital and drove to our apartment. When I arrived home, I ran to my desk and grabbed the player. Thinking of what to record, I rushed to our daughters' room and started ploughing through their bookshelf, looking for a book with a story she would enjoy. Then I remembered Naomi's school poetry notebook. Every week they glued a new, funny poem into it and Naomi and I would often read them. That was it! I was going to record me reading those poems. After some frantic effort trying to find that notebook, I suddenly thought it might still be in her school bag so I ran to the dining room where I found the bag, opened it, stuck my hand inside, grabbed the first thing I felt, pulled it out of the bag, and – like in slow motion – I saw a book appearing. Not Naomi's poetry book but a book with a big bright yellow sun on the cover. It shocked me because that sun instantly reminded me of the tune I had been humming. I stood there, as if frozen, staring at the sun on the cover of the book Naomi had brought home the day she suffered that cardiac arrest. The week before I had endlessly hummed “here comes the sun”, and there it was: in Naomi's bag. I hurried to the study room, turned on my computer and looked these four words up in Google. It turned out to be a song of the Beatles. A simple song of belief that better days are ahead. How appropriate.
Here comes the sun (doo doo doo doo) Here comes the sun, and I say It's all right Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here Here comes the sun Here comes the sun, and I say It's all right Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here Here comes the sun Here comes the sun, and I say It's all right Sun, sun, sun, here it comes (x5) Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear Here comes the sun Here comes the sun, and I say It's all right Here comes the sun Here comes the sun, and I say It's all right It's all right
After sitting down and reading the lyrics for a while, I relaxed a bit. It had been a few days since we last saw Naomi, since she had disappeared into the ICU, but it felt like an eternity. We missed her and wanted to be with her. As per the lyrics of the song, it indeed felt like a long cold lonely winter. Able to compose myself, I read up the poems and recorded my voice on the MP3 player. Once done, I took Naomi's book and drove back to the hospital, pondering what just happened and thinking about the lyrics of the song.
Back at the hospital, I rushed to Paulina who was still sitting beside the closed doors of the ICU. It had become our waiting place. Each time a staff member entered or left the ICU and the doors were opened, we hoped (in vain), to catch a glimpse of Naomi. I asked Paulina to go with me to a less busy place so we could talk for a moment. In the corner of a quiet hallway, I told her I had been humming “Here comes the sun, little darling, it’s all right” and showed her Naomi's book. Telling about what happened at home, and showing her the book, I told her that I felt it was a message for us: that for whatever reason this disaster had to happen but that in the end Naomi would be all right again.
The fact that the song emerged five days before Naomi collapsed and that the book – much like a reminder – appeared several days afterwards, strangely made it feel as if these two occurrences somehow had been "planned". Every Friday afternoon, Naomi's class went to the library so that each child could select a book to read in the weekend. On that specific day, from the hundreds of books she could have picked, Naomi brought home a book with a big bright sun on the cover. I just felt it was not a coincidence.
That week the weather was absolutely dreadful in Shanghai. It was cold, it rained and everything looked grey and miserable. We felt miserable too. Deep down, though, after what I had just experienced, I sensed a calmness, which was weird given all the fear and anxiety that had grabbed hold of us all this time. So I told Paulina: "Let's believe it's all right. Let's wait for the rain to stop and the sun to shine."
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