".... my wife and I found ourselves in a small corner of a neonatal intensive care unit, holding and caressing our first born infant daughter. The ambient hum of medical machinery droned in the background and a panoramic window framing the Shenandoah Mountains sprawled out in front of my new family and I. We gazed lovingly over every detail of our daughter's face, every freckle on her skin, cataloging every sound and smell the way all new parents do. The difference was that our child had developed an infection during delivery. She was very, very sick and her prognosis hadn't yet been determined. Later that day, our daughter Madalyn Grace Morton died in my arms. We were walking through Hell. Life was imitating art.
Few would argue the fact that losing a child is one of the worst things anybody can go through. The effects an individual experiences from a trauma of that magnitude are felt physically, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually. People grieve in very different ways, and when the cards and flowers stop coming and the condolences trickle off, a couple is left to sit with their grief, despair and emptiness while the rest of the world 'gets back to normal.' Six weeks after I handed my dead daughter over to a nurse, I found myself walking on to the stage at Madison Square Garden to 'entertain' people. I was by no means ready to re-enter that world, but the music industry is vicious and unforgiving… and somehow, there I was. For me, 'grieving' took the form of a rapid and immediate free fall into an abyss of drug addiction. While I don't defend my response as appropriate (and I certainly wouldn't recommend it), I do very clearly understand how it happened. And I do forgive myself."
I sincerely pray I never know what it is like to go through what he went through with Alex and/or Megan. Read more here.
No comments:
Post a Comment