Bob CollinsThe chances are pretty good that just down the street from you right now, there is incredible drama taking place, none of which we can tell you about on the news.
Joy, tragedy, people going above and beyond to help someone they may not have known a day or two ago, and grace — so much grace.
In the absence of these stories, we can often succumb to the perception that life is just as awful as the steady drumbeat of tweets and posts tells us it is.
It’s happening behind the doors of the hospital, and it took Dan Langlois, of Neenah, Wis., to snap us back to reality.
He walked out of Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee the other day with one of the four children he and his wife, Sara, have adopted. All of them have physical challenges. One has spina bifida. Others have fetal alcohol syndrome, autism, and cerebral palsy.
He turned and took a picture of the doors. And then he wrote a letter of apology.
We just had to share this beautiful note we received from the father of a boy who has been coming to Children’s Hospital…
Posted by Children's Wisconsin on Sunday, September 23, 2018
“I have walked through these doors 1000s of times,” a commenter responded. “And I was one who had to walk out without my little boy. Devastating! And still there was hope. Because little pieces of him walked out with other families. Ensuring that they could still look at those doors with hope in their heart. For that we are thankful. Nicholas Philip Paul Beecher, 2013-2016.”
Said another:
Those doors walking into the hospital and the NICU for us were the physical representation of the moment I would let all my driving anxiety go and get into a new headspace so I could be an upbeat happy mom to our daughter Stella.
By the time I hit the end of the skywalk and passed by security I wanted to be smiling. The day I had to leave the hospital forever without her I made it to the end of the skywalk strong, but as I approached those doors I lost it.
Never again would they be the doors I walked through to see my daughter. Never again would I smile at the nice security guards and flash my parent badge. I was helped through those doors whimpering and crying and walked through them as a loss mom. I’m not surprised they hold so much meaning for so many families and hearts.
So. Much. Grace.
“I never expected anything quite like this, as far as people just pouring their hearts out,” Dan tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel‘s Jim Stingl.
