In memory of Dawnita

One year ago on Saturday, our family said goodbye to Dawnita. She was our only daughter, my three sons’ only sister, and a very special girl to many others. So as I sit down to write its hard to think of any thing else to write about other than Dawnita.

Dawnita was born with Edwards Syndrome and at birth we were told that two months was the average life span of these special children. 21 years later she was still a shining light in our lives. It’s her journey with an outdoor family that I would like to share with you from a father’s heart. I’m sure if the Doctors actually knew where that little girl went, the activities she was a part of, they would probably be horrified. In actuality I believe her being included in so many of these activities and trips with family and friends extended her time with us.

When Dawnita was first born in the spring, May of ‘86, the term that was most used in describing her was, “fragile.” No matter how we pampered her and loved her, the word was that her stay would be very short. This situation brings stress from many angles into a family, not only financially but also in family relationships as it changes the total way the family has operated in the past. After two to three months of intense living I realized we hadn’t gone camping once that summer and the promise of doing so was fast disappearing into fall. One weekend I just packed up the boys, grabbed a package of wieners, some other grub, threw in their sleeping bags and us four guys headed for the hills. I hated to leave Sue and Dawnita behind, but sometimes drastic situations call for drastic actions. I admired Sue for allowing this, and again before the summer was over we repeated our trip. By the time Dawnita was a year old she had had pneumonia a dozen times, sleep apnea, a gastrostomy tube for feeding and a trach tube for breathing, and she began to flourish. This second summer and many more would be different than the first as we had decided she was one with our family and one with our enjoyments. During fishing trips she spent many an afternoon in the shade of a big rock or Juniper tree while we filled buckets with crappies and stringers with trout. And many of these fishing holes were not just off the highway, but as far back as we could drive. When the boys would burn out a bit on the fishing, they would come into where their sister was, grab some cookies, wrestle around with her and she’d send them back to their poles with some giggles. It just all seemed the natural thing to do. We did confine our fishing to casting from the shore because Sue had nightmares of combining a little girl with a trach, with a boat over open water. Us boys were fine with that as we could combine our fishing with staying together. She was such an integral part of our family at this point that I was beginning to wonder who was raising who. She never talked, so the boys figured it out pretty soon that they could tell her anything and be confident she would never tell a soul, but she would just unconditionally love them, hug them and give them 100% of her support. Can you ever ask for a better companion in the home or in the field?

One of our very favorite spots to go camping and fishing in the summer was in the Strawberry mountains outside of Prairie City, Oregon. The camp ground was about 130 miles from where we lived so we only got up there once or twice a year but it always was a great time. When we got there one year and got the tents set up, Sue discovered that she had left Dawnita’s food in the fridge at home. Not good, as it was food that was pureed so we could put it in a large syringe so we could get it down the tube that went directly into her stomach. This challenged our imagination and our intuitiveness. For two days our sweet little girl lived on pancakes that were soaked in Sprite till it was a mush that would go down the tube. Thank goodness it never had to pass her taste buds. She just stayed her happy little self and knew no different. All she seemed to know was that she was with those that she loved and they loved her.

Another time we were in this same campground and the boys thought it would be much more enjoyable if their sister would be with them when they went up to Strawberry Lake to go fishing. That was all good and well except it was about a 1 1/2 mile hike up a mountain trail through parts of the Strawberry Mt. Wilderness Area where you couldn’t leave a continuous track and Dawnita’s three wheel jogger stroller left three continuous tracks. We did find a Ranger and he confirmed that for handicap persons this rule did not apply. You never saw three happier little boys as they ran circles around her, pulled her over rocks, around windfalls just so they could have little sis with them. And if her brothers were happy, she was tickled pink. It was as if she knew that as she went, so would the rest of the family go.

There was only one time that we took Dawnita camping that I questioned my sanity. We had a little aluminium tent trailer that was more tent then trailer that we took up to Fish Lake, high up in the Steens mountains. We were on our way to visit relatives and it seemed only natural to spend the first night on a little outing. I’m not sure how high Fish lake is, but I believe it must be between 7 and 8 thousand feet, and at that height in the mountains the weather can be very unstable. It wasn’t long after we finished our s’more’s and crawled into our beds that we could hear the thunder and lightning coming and along with that comes wind and rain, buckets of it. I’ve been in lots of situations that weren’t good but I can never remember feeling so responsible and so helpless. The two older boys stayed pretty quiet while the youngest did some whimpering. But what really tore at my heartstrings was the look on Dawnita’s face each time the lightning lit up the tent and there was nothing else we could do to comfort her. I would have liked to kind of explain what was going on, but that would have meant nothing to her. All we could do was hold her between us. We were all totally exhausted by morning but the one that recovered the quickest and brought a smile back to the rest of us was Dawnita. She had lots of capacity to love and didn’t seem to have any capacity to think bad thoughts or retain bad memories. I suppose I could write a book about the last 21 years, but that’s for another day.

So it was with tears running down my cheeks and many memories and thoughts running through my head, that Sue and I watched those three young men Dawnita helped raise, along with five of her cousins carry her those last few feet to her final resting place.

Dawnita, thanks for coming, thanks for sharing your life with us, you are much better off today, away from the pains you endured these last few years. Hopefully I’m a better man today for your coming, your sharing, your loving.

Goodbye my little love.

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July 11, 2008 | 13 comments | Fishin' Stories, Huntin' Stories | By Gary Sorenson

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