because it was very scary. the doctor just very clearly stated, he has this condition, there s no cure. we ll have to be careful throughout his life. how nervous were you that he could die? i was afraid every day that i would go downstairs or go to his bedroom and he may have passed away in the middle of the night. one time we were driving in the car, and ben, with a different tone in his voice, said, mom, how do we know if we get to go to heaven? and how old was he? he was 4. i told him you just let jesus know you want to be there. he asked jesus if he would be his friend for the rest of his life. was he emotional when he had this conversation? he was. he actually had tears in his eyes. [ sirens blaring ]
looked outside my kitchen window and i took a mental snapshot of ben standing there smiling. that was the last time i saw him smile. almost immediately after that, jake came running in the back door and he said, mom, it s ben. i yelled at shawn to come outside, and we started doing cpr right away. shawn and i felt really alone in those moments. and i, again, just thought, all right, if this is the time, god, you can take care of him. i knew that he had passed away, but i didn t believe it until i heard it from my parents at the hospital. we had to deal with the
and he s having to deal with difficult questions, and i just wish he didn t have to deal with that at such a young age. on the first day of summer, ben thought he would be on the lake wake boarding. i went into the room and it was similar to the time he was four, but i knew he wasn t having a seizure because he was conscious and he was talking. his fingers were blue. by the time we got to the e.r., we learned there was an abscess on his tonsil. so we went into everything expecting it to be extremely routine. but it was during the surgery that ben experienced cardiac arrest. he finally got up to icu and he was unconscious and they had him on the a breathing machine. they warned us that when he woke up, the hope was he would be
yeah. and he said he had his hand on ben s shoulder. and he said there was this mirror. he said when he was looking in that mirror, he wasn t just seeing his reflection, but he saw his whole life. he said when he looked in the mirror, it was the best feeling and that he was happy with everything that had happened in his life and he was proud of himself. and ben thought he was going forward to heaven, but instead he woke up on the floor of the high school. i had come home from college to visit that weekend, and we sat out by the lake on our boat dock. it was very unusual to find him out in the dark in the middle of the night in the winter when it was so cold so i asked why he was there.
he prayed we wouldn t be sad or scared for him anymore because he wasn t sad or scared. and he added, i m okay with whatever god decides. did that bring you peace? a lot, yes. he wasn t afraid of dying anymore at that point. the day he chose to make this video, we had that home church that morning, and we didn t know what he was doing afterwards, but that s when he went into his room and made this video. so a week later, christmas day. we actually had a wonderful christmas morning together. we opened presents as a family. we were all laughing and ben was very adamant about playing our annual family game of monopoly. and it was right after that that he went outside with jake and watched him jump on the trampoline with his friends.