An Everlasting Life
Remembering Mary Denise Sauer July 12, 1995—August 26, 1995
by James L. Sauer
In the summer of 1995, my wife Paula gave birth to a little girl we named Mary. Mary was not a normal child. Her genes were all mixed up. Mary was doomed from day one to die.
We had no hint that there would be any trouble. The ultrasound had picked up nothing amiss. We had prepared her crib and painted the room. All was ready for the normal joys of a newborn child. But then Mary came and she was not the kind of child we were expecting at all.
Dr. B. looked troubled that day in the delivery room. Things were not going right. Delivery was too slow. He kept feeling what he thought were the irregularities of a face wrongly positioned in the birth canal. But Mary was not face forward. It was the irregularity of human deformity. And when our daughter’s head crested from the womb, there was a hole the size of a silver dollar that exposed the rough membrane of her brain and a mouth that opened wide into the cavity of the nose. Dr. Evans, the neonatalogist, was rushed in to pronounce the death sentence. Prognosis: short term. What was that prognosis—long term? “No, short term,” she reiterated. This was the baby that God had sent us. This was his gift. This was the child we received with gratitude.
We sent out this announcement to my work community a week after her birth in an effort to explain our strangely mixed feelings:
Birth Announcement
We are happy to announce that on July 12th, Mary Denise Sauer, 8 lb. 15 oz., was born at Chester County Hospital.
Mary is a special child created by God for his unique purposes. Mary was born with an extra 13th chromosome (Patau syndrome). On the exterior, she has a cleft palate and a scalp lesion. On the interior, a hole in her heart and neurological malformations, which will result in a short life of a few weeks or even months.
The Psalmist says: “Children are a blessing from the Lord.” And Mary is a blessing to us. She has already been the focus of prayers, tears, gifts, calls, and acts of charity. Her presence in the world is advancing Christ’s kingdom. (Something that, unfortunately, cannot always be said of everyone.)
Mary reminds us of our own helpless, short life; and God’s inexpressible love for us in the humanity of Jesus Christ our Savior, God’s incarnate Son, “who was conceived by the Holy Spirit…and suffered under Pontius Pilate.”
James L. Sauer is the Director of Warner Memorial Library at Eastern College in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. He and his wife, Paula, live in Coatesville, Pennsylvania with their seven children.
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