Hello everyone. I want to keep everyone up to date with the book progress. I have joined a few writing forum’s to help me become a better writer. In the process I have been able to post some of my writing in order to get feedback from strangers as to what they think of the book so far. What I have come to realize is that I need to rewrite much of the book so that I can get Mari’s story across the way it needs to. I want others, those who never have had a chance to meet and get to know our precious angel in heaven to be able to do it through the book.

The dilemma I am in now is how do I move forward.  I have a new prologue I would like to share with you now.  I did have this before but I think it is a good way to draw the reader in to want to find out more about this little girl who has her mommy so upset to possibly losing her.  I also have a poem starting each chapter that has something to do with the chapter that is getting ready to be read.  It directly correlates to it.

Prologue

It’s 12:30 in the afternoon on a scorching Chicago summer day.   The room we are about to enter is stark white reminding me that I’m in a hospital.  The nurses are asked to clear out of their lounge as this will be the location where lives are changed.

My husband Keith and I are the first to now enter the somber room.  We head to the other side of a stately square maple table that seems to encompass the rather small space.  Over the next couple of minutes it seems that every resident and fellow working on the PICU floor that day has come to watch the upcoming display.  By the time everyone has come in, there is standing room only.  I think, “Why do ALL these people need to be in here?  Do they think they are at the movies getting ready to watch a show?  I’m surprised they don’t have their popcorn!”

Finally, the PICU and Pediatric Neurologist Attendings arrive.  Two seats have been saved at the table to the left of me.  At this point I am more nervous than I have ever been before in my life.  My stomach is doing somersaults as we await the verdict about to be handed down.  Deep inside my already wounded heart it knows what we’re about to be told with my brain waging war saying, “There is hope.  Don’t you dare give up now.  She is still alive.”

The neurologist starts to speak and it’s like the world starts to slow down to a snail’s pace as I try to comprehend what is being said.  Suddenly through the (haze)fog I hear, “The person that you know as your daughter is no longer with us.  She will never be the same again.”  Before the doctor can say all the words, my world instantly crumbles down all around me as my worst nightmare has just come true.  I sit there sobbing with an avalanche of tears I never knew could exist in just one person.  In what seems like the blink of an eye, my life has now changed into an unexpected realm of grief and thrust into an unimaginable reality.  My brain is simply unable to wrap itself around all of this.

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From here it is a matter of which way to go that will draw in the reader.  I have three options I am trying to choose from.  Option 1 would start something like this:

Chapter 1 – In the Beginning…

Impossible Possibilities

It has not come
am I really that late?
It’s been 29 days
according to the date.

They said it can’t happen,
it’s not possible you see;
But God has other plans
that happen to be just for me.

I go see the doctor
just to make sure
that I might be expecting
a little him or a her.

For the doctor says
I just need to wait to see
nine months from now
you will be happy as can be

The wait may seem long
but time will fly by
because it will happen
in just the blink of an eye.

When your little one you’ve wait for
finally comes on out
your family will be complete
there will be no more doubt.

The first time I saw Keith we were both in the Army stationed at Fort Hood, Texas.  My battalion had just moved to these new barracks about two weeks prior.  We had over sixty percent female soldiers compared to Keith’s being almost one-hundred percent males with the exception of one.  I can only imagine being an eighteen to twenty-something guy and finding the plethora of new “friends” to be made.

He and several of his buddies came by my barracks to visit two of my next door neighbors.  I was standing out on my balcony in front of my door when one of the guys stated talking to me.  Then Keith came over.  He looked like he might have been sixteen or seventeen years old.  I thought one of my neighbors was his sister.

I asked him, “So are you here visiting your sister?”

“No.”

“So, who are you with?”

He points to the guys and says, “I’m with them.”

(with the chapter continuing on from here to where Keith and I get married, find out about our infertility issues, we get pregnant and have Mari.)

Option 2

Chapter 1 – And So It Begins…

Moments

Who could have known
this moment would have arrived;
one we were told was impossible
and would never come

The moment of breath,
the moment of life;
even at that
a rope stops it cold.

Only the magic
of an angel’s hands;
who works his magic
to bring us the moment
we’ve waited for.

At last the air escapes
into the vastness around;
it shows us the promise of
days, months, and years to come.

Who could have known
that all at once love envelops
the one waiting in the clouds
other than the Everlasting.

The amazing power of love
holds us to this moment;
as the future is promising
yet bleak at the same time.

I look back on Mari’s life and the drama of her life started the very moment she was born. She was not breathing due to the cord being wrapped around her neck.  Looking back on my pregnancy and all the complications I endured, I guess her delivery had to follow suit.  Two days after I found out I was pregnant, Keith and I headed out to Florida on our very first vacation as a couple.  While there, I started to have stomach issues.  Once we got back home it only got worse.  I will never understood why they called it “Morning Sickness” as it was never just in the morning.  It was also afternoon, evening and even at bedtime.  Then it would just start all over again the next day.  Personally, I liked to call it “All Day Sickness” as it made more sense.  The doctor ultimately put me on bed rest and I lost over 15 pounds.  In the end he had to give me an anti-nausea medication to get it under control.

Shortly after I had that under control and was back to work I started to have swelling around my ankles as well as my blood pressure and the protein levels within my body increasing.  These were the first signs of Toxemia.  It is also known as preeclampsia or eclampsia depending on the stage you’re in.  As it continued to get worse, my doctor would only allow me to work half days.  After five weeks of that, the toxemia had become so bad I was put on complete bed rest.  To top it all off, I was really starting to feel completely miserable.

(This part would be rewritten like I have in option 1 to show more of the story than to just tell it.  From here she is already born and then I get into her life with a couple of flashbacks as to how Keith and I met, got married, infertility issues and the pregnancy)

Option 3

I start from where Mari’s gets sick that first day and then do many flashback throughout her life, how Keith and I met and got married, the pregnancy.

I am curious to know what you guys think.  When you think about this please pretend you do not know me or Mari for a moment.  If this was a book you were to pick up in the store to see if you would be interested which is the better way that you would be interested in buy the book to read it.  I hope I am making sense.  Please reply to this post with you responses.  I am really looking forward to hearing what you guys have to say.