Bess Magruder's baby:
Benson, Linda
CHRONICLE OF LIFE & DEATH-II Bess Magruder's baby LINDA BENSON ANSWERING THE PHONE is the worst part of the day at Social Services, and the ringing is constant. A ten-year-old girl, who lives in...
...Due to the severity of their problems, such babies generally die quickly...
...So the ringing phone is the hospital, announcing the birth of one of these abandoned children...
...Finally, Cassie needs hospitalization and is sent to an out-of-town hospital specializing in the treatment of children with problems like hers...
...Looking at rows of children born without any limbs, without noses or ears, with only a brainstem to sustain involuntary breathing, doubting the existence of God, or any kind of meaning in the universe, was easy...
...A ten-year-old girl, who lives in an isolated rural area, is pregnant and needs counseling...
...In the face of Bess's determined dignity, the Agency shows a human dimension and finds funds to relieve Bess of the financial burden for a proper burial...
...She is a beautiful, nut-brown infant with button-black eyes and tiny black curls...
...Still, the thanking was hard, because Bess Magruder didn't know that she had done any giving: she thought she had received...
...A baby has been born with multiple, often deadly, deformities...
...Sometimes, the responsibilities of our job involved visiting institutions where children who did not share Cassie's early death, with serious mental and physical handicaps, would live out their entire lives...
...At first, Cassie thrives...
...One spring day, Cassie stops breathing for the last time...
...An Earth Mother, Bess is all warmth and breasts, and her table is invariably loaded with homebaked breads and pies, and fresh LINDA BENSON is a former adoption worker with a rural department of social services...
...She is delighted, even if briefly, to have a baby of her own...
...Or perhaps, children like Cassie provide the opportunity to test how much humanity we carry within us...
...Her child will not be buried in a pauper's grave, or in a plywood box...
...Except that internally, she is horribly malformed, and she will not live a year...
...Lessons in detachment and cool professionalism do not mean much to Bess...
...A woman decides she is "not motherhood material," and wants to release her institutionalized eight-year-old daughter for adoption...
...In hospital nurseries, they seem forgotten in sad corners...
...Normally, a child like Cassie would be cared for in an institution...
...Some of us live whole lifetimes without accomplishing what Cassie did with very little time...
...Bess Magruder has no children of her own, though she has many children in her life: a teenage boy with limited IQ, a blind three-year-old, a behavior-problem ten-year-old, and a multitude of former foster children who visit often...
...Yes, someone will come out to talk to her...
...Bess becomes proficient at artificial respiration, breathing her own strong life into this tiny brown baby...
...She turned an impersonal machine of an Agency into individual, weeping faces at a funeral...
...Perhaps in earlier times, like the Middle Ages, when the death of infants was so routine it lost its impact, acceptance of death was simpler...
...With her own money, Bess will purchase a tiny pink casket for her baby, and burial clothes...
...She was a childless woman's longed-for child, when more perfect babies always went to homes with no room for a less-than-perfect child...
...After various legal machinations, the baby becomes a ward of the Agency...
...Yes, someone will be out to discuss the plan...
...She will arrange an obituary, and people to mourn the passing of a life, and there will be the many flowers that should be present when a child dies, including the blue violets from Cassie's social worker...
...A decision is made that Cassie will return to live with Bess, in a family, until whatever time she has is through...
...Foster parents, who adore caring for infants, are reluctant to take the time or risk involved in caring for a terminally ill child...
...Anyway, the phone was ringing again...
...This time, though, there is a foster home...
...We worry about what will happen to Bess when Cassie dies...
...Bess is a powerful lady, and she keeps together well, concentrating on facts...
...After all, the issue says, why prolong the life of a child who is in pain, and guaranteed a life of uncertain quality...
...However, when Cassie's social worker visits her at the hospital, she finds her covered with bedsores and occupying the ominous corner of the hospital nursery where terminally ill babies seem to be stationed...
...Still, the worst calls come from the area hospitals...
...Though Bess has come to think of Cassie as her own and is keeping a twenty-four hour vigil to keep Cassie breathing, an iron will is not enough to sustain life...
...vegetables from her garden...
...Then the inevitable problems begin...
...For mourners, there might be a social worker to witness, and to do the eternal paperwork...
...A single-parent foster mother, Bess Magruder, will care for Cassie...
...Of course, we thanked Bess Magruder for what she had given to Cassie, and to us by her example...
...This baby, Baby Cassie Ro for the records, is different...
...Several times, the rescue squad is called to start Cassie's breathing again...
...Young life often protests the unnaturalness of death, but Cassie has spent her energy in an invisible internal battle, and she slips away peacefully...
...When Agency wards die, they are buried in a type of potter's field, in a coffin that is a cross between the famous pine box, and the cardboard shoeboxes in which the family pets are buried...
...Frequently, on these joyless occasions, parents simply refuse to assume responsibility for their child...
...Foster parents are rarely wealthy people, perhaps because wealthy people can afford to purchase perfection, while poorer folks learn to see the beauty in what others might regard as flawed...
Vol. 110 • October 1983 • No. 18
