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Grief and Hope: Family finds life comes full circle
Legend has it that a child born en-caul — still inside the amniotic sac — will be blessed with good luck and fortune. Legend also holds that such a child will be forever safe from drowning.
Such births are a statistical rarity, but are more common among premature babies, which may explain in part why Hope Vogt entered the world en-caul when she was born three weeks early on Oct. 1.
But there may have been another, more “goosebump-inducing” reason, says her mother, Sarah Dalton Vogt.
Because just weeks before Hope’s arrival in the world, her grandmother, Joyce Tusan-Dalton, departed it — the victim of an accidental drowning while kayaking on the American River.
“It’s almost as if as if her grandmother gave her a gift she herself didn’t have,” said Hope’s other grandmother, Linda Gould, of Yuba City.
And now Hope, in turn, gives just what her name implies to a still-grieving family.
————
To say the past nine months have been tough for Sarah Vogt would be an understatement.
Things had been going well for this Davis High School graduate — Class of 1998 — and her husband of five years, Gary. They were living in Yuba City, near Gary’s family, and raising their now 2-year-old son Jackson, a tow-headed aficionado of all things cars.
Gary’s parents, Linda and Pat Gould, helped care for Jackson while Gary worked in sales and Sarah as a phlebotomist.
Tusan-Dalton, a longtime Davis resident who taught art at Vanden High School in Fairfield, frequently made the trek up to Yuba City to see her grandson — playing with him, taking him to the park and “doting on him,” Vogt said.
“It was her passion,” she said.
Tusan-Dalton came even more frequently over the summer when Vogt found herself in the midst of a tumultuous second pregnancy. It started when she learned at 14 weeks that she had a large blood clot in her uterus and would have to go on bed rest for the duration of her pregnancy.
“It’s a mother’s worst nightmare,” Vogt said.
Not being able to care for her toddler or help support the family by working was devastating to Vogt, who always considered herself quite independent. Fortunately, family was there, and though Vogt wasn’t used to leaning on others, she learned how. Good thing, because she would need to time and again.
First there was the ultrasound at 20 weeks, which brought the happy news that she was carrying a girl, but also indications of a serious problem with the baby — an abdominal ascites, a swelling that appeared to be damaging the bowel.
Two weeks of worry ended when a follow-up ultrasound showed the problem had resolved on its own.
But even that piece of good news would be followed by bad: Gary Vogt was laid off. With Sarah Vogt still on bedrest, there was no income.
“It was one hit after another,” Vogt recalled. “It was very, very difficult. I had a lot of low moments. But I know there’s a reason, a lesson in the end. It’s all happening to teach you something, to be a better mom, a better wife. For me, it was a huge lesson in accepting help.”
Once again that help came from family — in this case Gary’s parents, the Goulds. They live with their disabled son Robert in Yuba City, and they took in the Vogts as well.
“There was no hesitation on their part,” Vogt said. “They cleared a couple of rooms for us, kept us fed, cared for Jackson. They never made me feel guilty. I could not have done it without them.”
It was there at the Gouldses’ home, while watching television on the evening of Sunday, Sept. 4, that Gary Vogt would receive a phone call from Tusan-Dalton’s partner, Joel Ellinwood.
He and Tusan-Dalton had been kayaking on the American River when the kayak flipped over near the Watt Avenue bridge. Tusan-Dalton became trapped under the swift-moving water, and it was 20 minutes before rescue personnel were able to free her.
She was at the UC Davis Medical Center, Ellinwood said.
The Vogts and Linda Gould jumped in the car and began the long drive from Yuba City.
“A million things are going through your mind,” Vogt recalled. “She has to be fine. She just has to be. But they took her to the Medical Center, so it can’t be good.”
It wasn’t. The prolonged period underwater had ravaged her lungs and her organs were shutting down.
Vogt and her brother, Stephen Dalton of Davis, went in to see their mother.
“They were doing all these things to keep her alive,” Vogt said, “but she’d been without oxygen for so long her organs were shutting down.”
Vogt’s childhood friend Christy Sillman, a registered nurse, explained the likely consequences of the prolonged oxygen deprivation, and that the time had come to make a choice: Let the medical staff continue “coding” Tusan-Dalton until they felt it was time to stop, and risk Tusan-Dalton dying surrounded by doctors and nurses, or go in together as family, be there when the machines were shut off, and see her off together.
“My brother had his pastor there and we talked and just said the best thing would be for everyone to be there, everyone she loved surrounding her,” Vogt said.
Ellinwood was there, and his daughter; so were Tusan-Dalton’s mother, sister and niece; Vogt, her brother and Sillman.
“As she was dying,” Vogt recalled, “and for a couple of hours later, I was completely at peace.”
“She really was,” Linda Gould recalled. “She is so strong, just like her mother. We all followed her lead.”
It was an inner peace and strength that would last for several more weeks, up until Hope’s abrupt arrival in the world, in fact. Through the aftermath of her mother’s death, the services, dealing with Tusan-Dalton’s Davis apartment and belongings, Vogt never sunk into despair. She credits her mother.
“My mom was keeping my mind and body calm for the sake of Hope,” she said.
Looking back on it now, she said, “I knew I was strong, but I really couldn’t wrap my head around losing my mom. Having lost my father (who died when she was 5), I couldn’t fathom ever losing my mother. She was everything to me.
“I would have thought I’d have collapsed. But she was keeping me strong.”
Even weeks later, when Hope decided to enter the world a little early, Vogt felt her mother’s reassuring presence, though first, as she went into labor, she feared she wouldn’t.
Tusan-Dalton had been there for Jackson’s birth and had every intention of being there the second time around. She’d even put together lesson plans for a substitute so she could take time off teaching.
“I was praying and thinking, ‘Please, please show me some sign that you’re here with me,’ ” Vogt said.
And in the midst of a heavy contraction, with her eyes squeezed tight, she saw something — a little purple heart — “and I knew it was her telling me to be strong, that I could do it.”
And surrounded by her husband and brother, her childhood friends Sillman and Lauren Keller, she did.
“It was magical to have all of them there,” Vogt recalled. “The whole time I was pregnant with her was very, very difficult. So much fear involved, feeling so afraid of losing her.
“And when she was born, all of those feelings were gone. It was just immediate elation and tears of joy.”
A few days later, though, the grief would hit.
“Not having (her mom) here to help me, to answer so many questions … I know she would have been here and I was feeling almost hopeless,” Vogt said. “Just so, so desperately wanting her advice … just one more hug.”
Hardest of all, she says, is realizing that Jackson is probably too young to really remember the grandmother who adored him, and that Hope will never know her.
So Vogt will be writing, with the hope that one day, through her stories, her children will know who their grandmother was, “how amazing she was,” Vogt said.
She’d actually started writing a blog early in her pregnancy, and plans to continue with that. But later, when she’s ready, she will focus more on her mother.
“I will write for (Jackson and Hope), so they’ll know her,” Vogt said. “Especially for Hope, so she’ll know everything that happened.”
Follow her blog at http://sarahsbedrestdiaries.blogspot.com.
— Reach Anne Ternus-Bellamy at [email protected] or (530) 747-8051.
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