Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 4, 1995 TAG: 9506020055
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Standing outside the hospital door, Ethel Dudley was a little bit scared.
Six months before, she had applied to the Botetourt County Department of Social Services to become a foster parent. The oldest of her four children was 30, and only the youngest, 15-year-old Shawn, was still at home.
She wanted to share her love for little babies with children whose parents weren't willing or able to love them.
That morning the call had come: "We have a baby girl for you."
The little girl on the other side of the door, though, wasn't exactly what Dudley had been planning for the last few months.
In popular parlance, the baby was "born without a brain." Technically, she did have some brain material - she was alive. But she would function only at the most primitive level. She probably would not live very long - perhaps only a few weeks, maybe a year.
Ethel Dudley didn't know what to expect on the other side of the hospital door, but she decided she had to go through.
May 6, 1995.
The day after Natasha Nicole Dudley's seventh birthday, the memories of the previous day's cake and presents were still fresh in everyone's mind at Ethel Dudley's house.
The little girl Ethel brought home from the hospital seven years ago had been named Natasha by Shawn. At a year and a half, Ethel and James Dudley Jr. of Eagle Rock had adopted her.
Ethel discovered she had been wrong to have believed at one time that a person couldn't love an adopted child as much as a biological child.
She knew now she loved this little girl every bit as much as her other children. She'd also discovered that mysterious truth that love has no limits - and she and James had taken in another foster child two and a half years ago.
Despite the dire predictions of disabilities, the Dudleys celebrated Natasha's abilities.
She smiled and laughed when she was rocked, "when you rubbed her little cheek, or ran your hand through her hair," Ethel remembers. Just the day before she had laughed as the family helped her open presents. Natasha couldn't see, but her hearing was sharp, and she responded to the voices of her family and the noises of the party.
While her family focused its attention on Natasha's defiance of the odds by living in relatively good health for so long, the condition of her birth did mean she had special medical needs.
At 6 months old, Natasha began having seizures and had to have surgery. She was blind, unable to speak, couldn't walk, couldn't even hold her head up unaided. She went to a special-education preschool every day that provided therapy for her physical limitations.
This April, she began to lose weight because of difficulty swallowing her liquid food. Doctors put in a feeding tube, and over the next month her weight jumped from 25 to 32 pounds.
Natasha had always had trouble breathing. Her mother or father would sometimes have to drape her over one arm or "hold her little chin up" to ease her breaths.
Her difficulty breathing eventually would cause her heart to enlarge and weaken from the extra strain, doctors said. Just a week before her birthday, however, her doctors decided to postpone a tracheotomy for a couple of weeks because her breathing seemed a bit easier.
The day after her birthday, though, Natasha's breathing was more labored, and she had a little nagging cough. After feeding her lunch, Ethel laid Natasha down in her bedroom where, Ethel hoped, the two vaporizers would make it easier for Natasha to breathe.
Natasha fell right asleep, and Ethel walked to the kitchen but always within earshot of the audio monitor installed in Natasha's room.
Ethel had been gone a few minutes, perhaps a quarter of an hour, when she went back in to check on Natasha. She knew immediately something was seriously wrong by the position of Natasha's head and her color.
She ran to call 911, but it was already to late to save her little girl.
Ethel Dudley wrestles with all the questions and pain and anger that wrack so many of us who have lost a child.
What if she hadn't left Natasha alone? Could she have done anything to prevent her death? Why did God have to take this little girl who was loved so much when there are so many unloved, unwanted, suffering children in the world?
It's easy enough for others to reassure her that she did more for Natasha than anyone would ever have believed possible. Natasha might have lived her life in institutions; might never have lived as long as she did without the intense love of her adoptive parents.
All the reassurance in the world, though, will not take away Ethel Dudley's pain. How we can best comfort her, I think, is to learn from her lesson of love.
In the debates over several contemporary social issues - abortion, euthanasia and public spending on a plethora of social services programs, for instance - we argue a lot about a vague criterion called "quality of life."
By an abundance of standards, we could label Natasha's "quality of life" as "low" or "inferior." What Ethel Dudley tells us is that the value of a human life like Natasha's isn't easily measured and shouldn't be easily dismissed.
Ethel Dudley is confident that for seven years, Natasha Nicole felt joy and love even if she couldn't understand them intellectually. And Ethel Dudley knows that Natasha gave something back to the society she was a part of. She taught those near her about unconditional love, about giving, about the blessings of unreservedly opening up a place in their hearts for someone who needed them.
As badly as Ethel Dudley hurts today, she'd do it all over again, and she wants others to know they can, too.
When people marvel at the sacrifices she and her family made over the last seven years, she dismisses the praise.
"Anybody would have taken her if they'd known the joy she would bring. I wouldn't have missed her for anything."
Cody Lowe covers religion and ethics for the Roanoke Times & World-News.
by CNB