Together in spirit: A mother's story
by Lee Nelson
May 14, 2000
Gently, he put an ear to his wife's abdomen, trying to hear or feel any movement from his unborn son. Kevin Esser kissed her warm skin and talked to the child he would never see face to face.
A precious photograph in the family album will keep the moment fresh forever.
The 29-year-old man had been told he would die soon. He was given no hope for a miracle recovery. The brain tumor that had haunted him for a year was taking over.
"He said he'd be waiting for us in heaven," his wife, Susan, said. "I know he went to heaven. He passed away in our bed, in my arms. The moment he died, a train went past our house with a huge blow from the horn. I'd like to think he jumped on that train and rode it home."
That was Dec. 9. Susan has tried to hold and believe in Kevin's promise that: "God has a plan. He will always be here for you and Noble, and so will I."
It hasn't been easy. Raw emotions come forth at all hours of the day and night. Everything reminds her of Kevin. When she turned on the new mechanical baby swing her father had put together, the song "You Are My Sunshine" began playing. Tears began rolling down her face and she became hysterical.
"Kevin always used to sing that song to me," she said.
The child he spoke to in the womb was delivered April 14 -- the day after what would have been Kevin's 30th birthday.
"He was born with red hair like his father, and he looks identical to him," she said while sitting on her couch, holding the 10-pound, 5-ounce baby. Pictures of Kevin surround them in the living room.
Before his death, the couple named their baby Noble Elisah Kevin Esser. Noble was the name of Susan's grandfather. And Elisah comes from the Bible. He was a man who healed a little boy with a brain tumor, Susan said.
A short life together
Susan hadn't dated for four years when she met Kevin. He was in the Quad-Cities from Seattle visiting friends. They were both artists and had many similar interests.
"The bond was there instantly, and the first night I knew he would be my husband," she said. Their love grew quickly.
Seven months later, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. It was inoperable, and the prognosis was not a positive one. His father had died four years earlier from the same type of malignancy.
The couple moved back to Seattle after Kevin underwent intensive radiation treatments at University Hospitals in Iowa City. After two months, the tumor was gone.
"We felt such victory and such relief that maybe the Lord had granted Kevin a reprieve. Maybe we might have our happily ever after," she said.
Doctors suggested preventive chemotherapy in hopes of eliminating all the cancer cells to prevent a recurrence. The doctors said one side effect of the chemotherapy, though, was that it would leave Kevin sterile. They said he should start thinking about sperm banking to make it possible for him to father a child.
While driving home from the doctor's office, Kevin proposed. They got married two weeks later on a hill outside Seattle. The couple came back to the Quad-Cities for a wedding reception hosted by Susan's parents. The chemotherapy was postponed for a while, so they were able to spend 10 days on a camping honeymoon.
Soon thereafter, Susan found she was in the earliest stage of pregnancy. They decided to move back to the Quad-Cities to set up housekeeping. Susan would work as a massage therapist and Kevin could get his treatments in Iowa City. They were only in their home one week before a new magnetic resonance imaging test showed the tumor was back and had spread through the brain stem into his spine.
Treatments were useless at that point, the doctors told them. Susan never went back to work because she had to take care of her husband 24 hours a day. The couple survived on $500 a month from Kevin's Social Security payments. He lost his strength and ability to walk. He crawled from the couch to the bedroom or bathroom. They used up all of their savings.
"It was tough at times for both of us," Susan said. She tried everything to make him comfortable in their small, two-bedroom bungalow. She religiously made him medicinal and nutritional shakes that he despised. He would sneak into the bathroom and flush them down the toilet so as not to hurt her feelings.
On the day he found out all hope for recovery was gone, he kept his sense of humor. "Good, now I don't have to drink those shakes anymore," he told her.
Pastor Ray Corlew of Westside Assembly of God in Davenport had met Kevin before the cancer was diagnosed when he walked into the church one Sunday with a baseball cap on.
"I'm conservative," Corlew said. "Usually when guys come to church with ball caps on, I ask them to remove them. Something inside me told me to leave him alone. I just welcomed him. Several months later, he told me that wearing a cap in church was a test. If they ask him to take the cap off, he doesn't come back."
From that moment on, the pastor, Kevin and Susan became close friends. In fact, Corlew was the one who took Kevin to University Hospitals after the headaches began.
"He just was a young man who was hurting. I think to myself, 'If this was my son, I would do anything I could do if he was hurting.' Kevin did become like a son to me. I watched him go down and spent a lot of time at their house. I admired Susan's strength and stamina."
On Easter Sunday, Susan came to Westside with the baby. The people in the pews clapped and cheered and one woman gave her a big basket of goodies.
"It's amazing because many of these people never knew Kevin or Susan that well," the pastor said. "But we even had a couple of our guys who are 80 and 81 years old take Kevin to radiation treatments in Iowa City. People just came forward to help this young couple out."
Lonely but not alone
Christmas came only a couple of weeks after Kevin's funeral.
"She had lots of ups and downs. It's been a real roller coaster ride," said Linda Robbins, Susan's mother. "Kevin was such a neat guy."
But the holidays and all the weeks since have been filled with people coming forward to help Susan in her grief and through her financial woes.
"If I wasn't a Christian I couldn't get through this. And the people here really come together in times like these. I'm so glad we moved back here," she said.
Genesis Medical Center "adopted" her for Christmas and filled boxes with baby clothes, diapers and goodies. J.C. Penney Co. gave her a $600 gift certificate, and an anonymous donor put $200 in her mailbox. Food came from a Veterans of Foreign Wars post, and checks simply seem to arrive by mail just in time for the water bill or some other expense to be paid.
McGinnis, Chambers & Sass Funeral Home gave her a cross necklace that holds some of Kevin's ashes. The rest of his ashes are being spread throughout the world by missionaries and friends as they travel. Kevin always wanted to travel the globe.
And Susan dearly appreciates the love and care given by her midwife and the nurses at Genesis during nearly three days of labor and Noble's delivery. One of the nurses on the day shift stayed well into the night.
"The nurses went out of their way to provide for all my needs. They did not have to do what they did. They were so sensitive to my situation. This could have been a very bad experience, but they filled the room with such compassion and empathy for me and my son that they really drove out the sadness."
Kimberly Sprague, Susan's midwife through Obstetrics and Gynecology Specialists in Davenport, talked with her many times through the pregnancy and explained that giving birth would give rise to a mix of emotions. She told Susan to bring whatever she wanted into the delivery room to make things more comfortable.
Susan had mentioned a recurring dream about her labor in which everyone was wearing a tiara.
So she showed up at the hospital with tiaras for Sprague and all the nurses to wear during the birthing process.
"You don't have to be stoic, but we also gave Susan permission to cry during labor. Susan and I broke down together several times. Susan is incredible. There are those unique people like Susan who just stand out," Sprague said.
Susan's labor was induced on a Wednesday because she was two weeks overdue. But the baby did not arrive until Friday. She had wanted her son to be born on that Thursday, Kevin's birthday.
Sprague reminded her many times that the more you try to control life, the more it does its own thing.
"At first, I couldn't put a thumb on why the baby wasn't born on Thursday. But then I realized that the baby wants its own birthday. I told Susan that this little baby is not a gift to Kevin, it is his gift to you," Sprague said.
She has helped deliver many babies and gotten close to many parents. "But what really stands out in my mind this time was that her husband was still very much a part of all this, even though he wasn't there," she added. "They had done a lot of planning, including the baby's name. Birth and death are so intertwined. People think they are at far ends of the spectrum, but they really aren't that far apart."
Susan hopes one day to open a Christian coffeehouse and bring mainstream Christian musicians to the Quad-Cities. She has worked in music promotions and has the strong artistic and decorating talents needed to fix up such a facility.
"I don't want to put Noble in a daycare. Kevin and I talked about everything before he died, including that," she said, walking the baby to a nursery decorated with an angel wallpaper border and a ceiling painted like clouds against the sky.
Susan's big dream, as it was Kevin's, is to be a youth pastor. Only time will tell whether that happens, she said.
In her thank you letter to friends and relatives after the funeral, Susan wrote:
"Kevin went to his Lord with confidence that everything, for all of us, would turn out just like it should. I know he is looking down on me with an 'I told you so' smile. I thank God for letting me be a part of Kevin's life and for demonstrating so many lessons that have given me complete confidence in my faith."
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