"A baby having a baby" that's the words I remember hearing while a couple of nurses were taking blood at one of my doctor visits.  As if I were too "young" to hear them talking about me.  I was eighteen, pregnant and scared to death.  I had no idea how to be a mother or how it would change my life.  As a teenager I thought I knew it all.  I thought I was in love...I thought we would be together forever...

It was around 11:00 p.m. when my labor began.  My older brother, Randy and my Mom drove me to Decatur General Hospital.  After what seemed like days of the worst pain I could ever imagine.  I gave birth to the most beautiful little girl that I had ever seen.  Cayla Brooke was born at 2:27 a.m. on November 12, 1984.  I had no idea how to be a mother.  Luckily I was blessed with a wonderful example to follow, my Mom.  It wasn't easy but little did I know that parenting would never be easy.  I would watch her sleep and think to myself "How did I create something so perfect?"  I took her once again to see her "father" thinking that he would surely fall in love with her...she looked just like him.  He was as young as me and simply not ready to be a father.  Growing up without a father myself, my heart was broken for her.

Less than a year after Brooke was born, I was pregnant with my second daughter and married her Father.  He was good to Brooke and was the only Father she ever knew.  The marriage failed after a year and then I was single with two daughters and back at home.  I was so young and confused and it seemed that I was determined to make my life hard.  My girls would visit there Daddy every other weekend and I was miserable until they came home.  After a while we all adjusted and became comfortable in our new life.  Brooke and Brandi were inseparable.  They were so close that they finished each others sentences.  They had a language that only they could understand.  Although Brandi was a year younger she spoke more clearly than Brooke and sometimes I would have to ask her what Brooke was trying to say.  I don't remember Brooke ever calling her sister by her name, it was always "sissy."  She had the sweetest little lisp and mispronounced many of her letters.

She had a smile that would take over her entire little face.  She and Brandi were always giggling.  Since they both slept in the same twin bed, I would put them each at one end but by morning they were both up at the same end with their arms wrapped around each other.  They were the closest I would ever have to twins so I tried to dress them alike as much as possible but Brooke preferred to wear dresses a little more than Brandi.  She was such a prissy little thing.  She loved to be outside and found beauty in everything.  She would proudly bring me a handful of purple weeds from the yard as if they were roses and was fascinated by dandelions and butterflies.  She would wear a pink tutu and dance up and down the driveway.  One day the postman pulled up and we watched her twirl right over to him, get the mail and twirl all the way back to deliver the mail to us.  She was always making us laugh.  Her favorite thing to eat was spaghetti or "Pasketti" as she called it and she would eat olives by the handfuls.  She would eat green onions without even making a face.  Although she was 100% little girl she had a little daredevil in her too.  Our yard was very steep and at the bottom of the yard there was a drop-off next to the neighbor's yard.  My prissy little girl would get on her big wheel and go way too fast down the hill...get right to where the drop off was and cut the wheel right before she reached it!  She nearly gave us all a heart attack!  I loved watching them play together and looked forward to watching them grow up together...I never dreamed that it could all change in a matter of hours.

It was later that night and Brooke had a fever...we called the doctor and he told us to put her in cool water and try to get the fever down.  At the time that was what doctors would advise to cool a fever down.  I did what they said and to this day it haunts me to think of putting her in a tub of water...her little teeth chattering and lips turning blue.  I bundled her up and watched her closely all night...her fever got worse.  I called the doctors exchange at 7:00 a.m. and told them that her fever was now at 106.  They said to meet them at the pediatrician's office immediately.  I grabbed a pillow and blanket and put her in the car and drove from Forest Park to Church St. in Decatur in what seemed like hours.  She lay lifeless in my lap as I touched her little face and said "We're almost there baby, it's going to be ok" she was so hot and I was so scared.  I reached the Pediatricians' office and they met me outside.  They took her and immediately started an I.V. the doctor lifted her shirt and noticed a purplish rash on her stomach...he diagnosed her right away.  It was meningococcemia, a rare form of meningitis.  Right before our eyes the rash started to take over her entire little body.  She was immediately put into an ambulance and rushed to Egleston Childrens Hospital.  I remember the ambulance driver was looking at me with such sympathy as if he knew something that I didn't.  I mean I'd never heard of this disease so it couldn't be that serious, right?

We reached the hospital and it was at that moment I realized that being her Mother didn't mean that she belonged to me.  I had no say so, they took her away from me and everything was happening so fast.  In a few minutes a nurse came out to give me her clothes...The next person that came to me was the Chaplin.  I was wondering why she was there...I thought they only came when it was a hopeless situration, right?

As the day went on the rest of the family was there.  Brandi's Daddy got there and his Mother too.  He loved her so much and she loved her Daddy too.  He accepted her as his own from the very beginning and for that I will always be grateful.  His Mother was so good to me and treated me like a daughter and I will always love her.

All we could do is sit and wait.  I was only allowed to see Brooke 10 minutes out of every hour...it didn't seem like very long but there were times that I couldn't last the full 10 minutes.  It was so hard to see her with all those tubes and things coming out of her little body.  It still didn't cross my mind that I could actually lose her.  The doctors were not telling me anything.  They actually said that because she had no blood circulation from the waist down that she might lose a foot or possibly a leg.  I thought...ok, I can live with that.  Finally we got some good news...she made it through the night and her blood count was better.  The doctor said "We're not out of the woods yet, we still have a few trees to cut down" words I will never forget.  We were so happy for any bit of good news; we decided to go down to the cafeteria for some breakfast.  We were sitting at the table when a nurse came up to me and said to get back upstairs that there were complications.  She had actually gone into cardiac arrest.  She tried so hard to stay with us, but was just not strong enough.  On the day of March 17, 1989 at 12:30 p.m., exactly 26 hours from the time we got to the hospital, my life as I knew it was changed forever.  I remember seeing the doctorcome into the waiting room........I remember hearing him say.......we lost her, but it still didn't compute.  He asked me if I wanted to see her and took me in the room.  I sat down in the rocking chair and they placed her in my arms.  I pulled the blanket around her and pulled her close to me.  I watched my tears run down her face.  My life would never be the same...

It has been 16 years since that day and it seems like only yesterday.  Do we get over the death of a child?  No...  We just learn to live with the pain.  She was my sunshine and my firstborn child.  I always told my girls that they were my heartbeat.  My heart skips a beat now, and that will never change.

I'm older now, turning 40 this year.  Her sister Brandi is 19 and I was blessed with another daughter, Julianna who is now 8 and looks a lot like her sister Brooke.  I am married to the most wonderful man in the world who is the kind of Father I always wanted for my girls.  I wished he had known my Brooke, they would have loved each other.  If I close my eyes and think of Brooke and can picture her running through a field of wildflowers with a handful that she picked just for me...

Cayla Brooke

McAllister

November 12, 1984

March 17, 1989

Brooke's Story

Brooke at Six Weeks

Brooke at Six Months

My First Funny Face

Mom and her "Silly Girl"