Callie Grace

We met up tonight with several family members at one of our favorite places, Maxi’s. Me and Ken, my sister Diana and her husband Tom, Shane and Matt, and Tom’s daughters Heather and Jennifer, and Heather’s husband Rey and their son Liam. Still with me? It was ten of us for food and drinks and conversation and laughter. Liam turned five years old this week, and he is such a super cute and smart kid who lifts everyone’s spirits. He totally conked out early on, but came to life later and we had a lot of fun rawring like dinosaurs and just being silly!

It was not exactly happy circumstances that brought us all together this time. Tom’s father, Heather and Jennifer’s grandfather, left us this week. Heather and Jen and family were able to come out from California to be with their Indiana family for a sad occasion which turned into a family get-together...and I know Ben would approve! Tonight was a lot of fun, a chance for some of us to meet up and celebrate our connections with each other. I hate to get too smarmy or sentimental, but damn...I love each and every person who was there tonight, and I can honestly say that I would take a bullet for any one of them. No lie.

To top it all off, we were discussing various political things and science things...and Heather pushed my buttons about vaccinations. She knows that is my hot-button issue, and she knows that just the mention of it gets me going! (Her and Rey are smart parents who follow the science, and Liam has all of his immunizations. Yay!) I mentioned that I recently got my booster shot for Tdap, and that no one there was going to be getting diphtheria or pertussis from me! Heather is at risk for infections, Liam is at risk as a young person, and we all, even as adults, can pass infectious diseases like pertussis on to those who are at risk.

Well, our server (who was awesome, by the way) came up to us and said, “Did I hear you all talking about pertussis?” We said yes, we were talking about vaccinations. It is making me cry to think about this, but she said that her daughter died from whooping cough (pertussis), and she is now an advocate for immunization and awareness of the dangers of not vaccinating. I went over to her and gave her a hug and said that I support her 100%, and she brought us all bracelets that have her daughter’s name on them: Callie Grace.

This is the very real face of non-vaccination. This woman lost her baby daughter because her daughter was too young to be immunized and she caught it from someone else.

I’ve written here about the importance of vaccinations, but it’s one thing to just write about it. It’s a whole other thing to encounter a person who lost a child to an infectious disease that is very preventable. It was astounding to me, and a very moving moment, to be discussing this with family and to have someone overhear us and say, “Yes...I know. And I lost my daughter to this infection.”  

Here’s to my family, here’s to those who we are missing, and here’s to Callie Grace.