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Now the doctor approaches. He has bad news, he says. Something about Jantsen's heart.
Then I hear the blunt words: "He is dead."
I look at Randy, standing just a few feet away. The floor gives way beneath me, and a million thoughts ricochet inside my head. How can I live without my baby boy, the child I carried for nine months inside my own body and have taken care of ever since? I feel a sickness spreading through me like acid, and I think that I am going to die, too, right here in this hospital.
A thought takes hold: Jantsen needs me. I ask to see him and run quickly down a fluorescent hallway. His body lies on a cold table. "I am right here," I whisper to him. I lean over him, taking in every detail. How cruel that I was not here earlier when the doctors were working on him. I could've told him how much I loved him. Did I say that to him the last time we spoke? I think not—I think we argued. Something about leaving his baseball glove out in the rain. I lay my cheek on his skin, trying to cover him.
Another doctor comes in. I'm still focused on my son when I feel a hand on my back and hear someone apologizing. Jantsen is dead.
Now my father, Joe, is next to me. I notice how red his face is, how puffy his eyes are. He speaks in a weak, tortured voice. "We did everything we could, Pam. We got to him quickly. We tried to save him."
"Of course you did," I say, holding on to the most stoic man I know. They all did. He, my sister, my brother-in-law—each of them gave Jantsen CPR, trying to pass on their breath to him. It must've been so scary for them. Yet what a blessing for Jantsen that he was in a familiar place, with people who adored him, who would have given their lives for him.
Though it's June, my blood feels like ice. We leave the hospital and walk to the parking lot, and I look for my daughter, Crista. In the car, I lay my head on her lap. Together, she, Randy, and I head home—but it no longer feels like that.
In the months since that day, I had lost at least 15 pounds. Even during dinner at my parents' house the night before Randy, Crista, and I left for Vietnam, I hadn't been able to eat more than a few bites.
But now, in this country, with my life seeming to begin again, I couldn't wait to eat. Every morning, I'd find a new place to try the pho soup, a spicy chicken broth with flat rice noodles, into which I'd squeeze the juice of two limes and add a thick bunch of mint. In the evenings, I'd start every meal with spring rolls wrapped in pieces of lettuce and cucumber and dipped in tangy ginger sauce. Then we'd dig into bowls of hot vegetables and rice, or a whole fish, caught earlier that day.
During meals, all we talked about was Vinh. The second evening after meeting him, Randy said what we were thinking: "That child is ours."
It's hard to explain to people who have never adopted, but sometimes there are moments when you just know.
"What is it about him exactly?" Randy asked as we sat on the balcony of our hotel room watching the city of Phan Rang prepare for sleep.
"I have no idea," I replied. "But he's amazing."
"I know he is," Randy said. "I know it right now."
It felt bizarre and terrifying. We could never, ever replace Jantsen. And the thought of adopting again had not occurred to me (we'd adopted Crista in the United States when she was a baby). I was pretty sure Randy felt the same way. But of the three of us, Crista was the most adamant, giving language to our feelings.
"Why would we not adopt Vinh?" she said one morning. "He has nobody else in this whole world who truly cares about him. Look at everything we have. Why would you not be the mom and dad to this baby?"
The answer was perhaps apparent the next morning, when I woke up sobbing so hard, I could barely lift my head from the pillow. It was Jantsen's 16th birthday. He'd now been gone from us for five months.
Randy came close to me, and the two of us held each other. He whispered a few prayers in my ear before we heard Crista waking up. She joined us in the bed. My good friend Traci had sent a package for Crista to open on this day, and after she unwrapped a beautiful, delicate music box, we held tight to one another, feeling again how much we had lost.
Eventually I pulled myself together, and we headed out toward the orphanage. It was our last day before we'd travel north to Hanoi for a short time, and I was filled with dread at having to say goodbye to Vinh.
The day before, I asked someone where I might find a bakery. On the way to the orphanage, we hunted for the address among barbershops, cafés, and shops selling silks and cell phones. Finally we found it, and I placed an order. Now I was back, and a woman handed me what looked like a wedding cake—it had big, greasy yellow and red flowers that outlined the words Happy Birthday Jantsen—and told me I owed her $7. I would have paid anything for this simple gesture in memory of my son's birthday.
We carried the cake to the orphanage, and after lunch, we celebrated with the kids. As I fed Vinh a piece, I knew that I loved this little boy. It was just as Randy had described it: an unquestionable sense of knowing.
The feelings I was experiencing about Vinh were more powerful than my fears. More powerful, in fact, than I was.
I can do this, I thought. I am close to 40 now, but even with all I have lost, I still have love to give. I took Vinh from Randy and whispered a promise to him. "We're going to come back to get you, Son."
On March 22, 2000, I wrote a note to Jantsen, something I'd been doing every once in a while as a way of keeping him close.
Dear Jantsen, I still feel like I am standing on a riverbank and the water is rushing by. The river seems deep and wide. But so be it. Your dad, Crista, and I have decided to take the leap of faith. We're diving in. I love you, Mom.
We started the process to adopt Van Alan Cope, the name we'd chosen for Vinh, as soon as we got home.
When we told people about our decision, most of them looked at us as if we'd lost our minds. "Everybody says you're not even supposed to change your hairstyle when you're in an emotional state," a friend said. "Certainly you shouldn't make a decision like this right now." The grief books agreed. One had even listed the different "levels of grief" we might expect to follow, assigning a certain amount of time to be spent at each.
It was as if we had entered an alien universe inhabited solely by grieving people and had to solve clues or take over enough planets before the leader would let us graduate to the next level. To ease the tension, Randy and I began joking about it.
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