A Horrible Way To Say Goodbye

In the days leading up to Iris's departure for New York with her Mama, I got to spend some quality time with her at home. She's such a little skuttlebug now, running laps around the broom closet, up and down the hall!

But she seemed to be not quite herself, coming down with a cold. It was our last dinner together, before putting her to bed and waking up the next morning to drop her off at Mama's.. Half-crazy, she had just stuffed her mouth full of peas and whatever else when all of a sudden she started choking. Bad choking! I was alone, panicking in my brain, but managed to send a cool, collected index finger in there to pulled out all the stuff she wasn't choking on, then sent it in again to try and scoop out the back of her throat. The sounds were horrible- how badly I wanted to hear her cry because that would have meant the airway was clear. It seemed like forever; I swear her eyes were rolling backward.. I wasn't sure if I could perform the heimlich (I could, I know now).. I contemplated calling 911 and was trying to pull the phone out of my pocket when finally something broke loose. A bunch of heaves and it all came out, including some blood from what I assumed was a scratch incurred by my long finger nail. She was crying, I was crying.

I picked her up and she immediately laid her head on my shoulder, exhausted from the most excrutiating 20 seconds of her life. I felt so horrible. And to think- earlier in the meal, I ran upstairs to grab something- not for long- but definitely 20 seconds. I will never do that again! For several moments afterward, I was numb to the world, realizing how simply this human life in my arms means everything to me. And then I was mad- mad that I had to go through this alone, abandoned by my partner when I thought these were the things we signed up for together. But then all that left, and what I most needed was a friend who could understand all of this and listen to me. Fortunately, she was at least on the other end of the phone..

To this day (actually July right now), I have not been able to shake the experience fully, and still experience slight anxiety attacks from it. In my effort to try and catch this page back up, there was no way I couldn't mention it. Its not exactly the most pleasant thing to post about, and it exposes a million ways in which I was/am a bad parent, but hey, parenting is parenting and I'm doing the best I can. All things considered, I'm a better dad now than I ever thought possible.. Iris hasn't choked since, nor have I left her alone with food..