Two years ago, a few days after Christmas, as my daughters, Lexie, 10, and Lidia, 7, cleaned their room and my 2-year-old twins, Chloe and Kevin, watched TV, I read an email that my husband had sent from Iraq, where he was stationed with the Air Force. When I turned around minutes later, the twins were gone. I found Chloe in the kitchen looking very pale; Kevin was lying down in my bedroom, also looking pale and drowsy. Chloe looked at me and said, "Mommy, I tired." I figured she had low blood sugar-- Lidia is hypoglycemic-- so I sat her at the kitchen table and gave her some chocolate milk and cereal. All of a sudden, Chloe fell off the chair, passed out. Then the panic hit: I discovered an open bottle of Clonidine, a high blood pressure medication, on the floor.
I kept my medicine on the top shelf of a cabinet, where I thought it was out of reach. But Chloe and Kevin found a way to climb onto the counter, open the bottle, and swallow the pills. I yelled for Lexie to call 911. Kevin was conscious but Chloe wasn't, so with the help of the 911 operator, I gave her mouth-to-mouth until the ambulances arrived. Luckily, the EMTs were able to give Kevin an injection of liquid charcoal, which counters the effects of an overdose. Since a person has to be conscious to receive the shot, they couldn't administer one to Chloe. Eventually, both children were comatose.
After two days of praying for her to revive, we were told that Chloe's kidneys were failing, and a priest was called in to give her last rites. My husband was already on his way back from Iraq, but he didn't make it until a few hours after Chloe died. When the priest told me that she was in God's hands, I screamed and cursed at him. I'm a religious person, but I couldn't understand what kind of God would take away my baby.
When Chloe left us, it was like she gave all the strength she had to her brother, because he made it out of his coma. Still, I was utterly devastated by Chloe's death, and I blamed myself, even though my husband and kids didn't. What if I had installed a lock on the medicine cabinet? What if I hadn't been on the computer? I wept every day for months. One day, Lexie asked, "If God is supposed to be nice, why did he take Chloe away?" A few nights later, Lidia attempted to answer her sister's question. "Maybe something bad was going to happen to Daddy so God took Chloe to save him," she said. I couldn't believe something so deep could come from a 7-year-old.
When my husband had to go back to Iraq last July, I realized that I had to stop living a life of what-ifs. With their father deployed, I couldn't let my children down. Together, we got through Christmas, the anniversary of Chloe's death, her birthday, and Mother's Day. And we've learned not to take one another for granted-- we hug and say, "I love you" every moment we can. Some families break up over tragedies, so I'm thankful that we're still together.
I like to believe that Chloe's death gave me a higher purpose-- to save other children from a similar fate. I've written to my congressman, encouraging a law that requires locks on medicine cabinets. Now, I make sure to lock up all of my medicines. I even find myself going up to strangers and telling them my story. As hard as it is to relive, it's something that I feel I need to do-- even if it keeps just one family from going through what we have.
Billie Lombardo, 38
Colorado Springs, CO
As told to Nicole Yorio