Otto’s Birthday
Tonight, I write about my son Otto. And how six years ago from right now, I was working hard, talking to my baby, laboring, birthing.
My son is always with me, he is such a big piece of my heart. I talk to him often. And as the years go by, I trust his answers. They are light as a thought, but my ears are getting swifter and more natural. So many times, especially this time of year, I am so heavy with his loss, so confounded by what happened, wondering why he died when he was eight days old. So many times my heart asks the question, “Darling, where are you?” It is the same as saying “my heart is hurting.” And so many times, without expecting any answer, he will come in less than a second. One time after my question a hummingbird flew down and hovered a few feet from my face, just looking at me, buzzing, and then flew away. Once as I sat by his rose bush and looked up at the sky, heavy and sad, asking this question, Luna came out of the house and said in a quiet voice, “Mom, I’m HERE, I’m OK.” In my heart it was an answer. Not that he is Luna, but that he is there, and he is well. At the cabin, as I sat looking up at the big open sky, alone, the breeze and the pines and the mountain, I asked again, where he was, and a cloud in the shape of a hummingbird floated through the sky. And each time this happens I giggle for a second, through my tears.
It’s never a time when I ask for an answer, the question comes out because I can’t bear to keep it in, and he comes when I don’t expect it. It’s not explainable, but it keeps happening!
I don’t want to try to convince anyone about what happens after we die because it’s such a delicate thing to speak. And it’s taken me a while to feel comfortable about what I feel to be true, and always I imagine what the scientist or the atheist would say when I say such things. But, I am, more and more, a mystic. And see that there is much more to being than what most of us busy Americans take in. There are worlds and dimensions, and they are beautiful. And this time of year, when the season starts to shift from summer to fall, there is an abundance of singing from the other worlds, which are really right here, somehow. And it is the time my son came and went, and this all makes sense, that he would come at such a time.
Until it doesn’t. It doesn’t usually make any damn sense. I look at his pictures, his soft, beautiful face, and remember holding him and his warmth and his amazing love, and I want to scream WHY? I will always scream that. And there won’t be an answer.
BUT, there will always be love. The kind of love you can only see from the corners of your eyes, if you don’t focus too hard, his love is around us, our love is around him. It is forever. My son is always and forever my son and I’ll never stop missing him and I’ll never stop loving him, and never stop weaving this grief, always weaving it, weaving it, different patterns and colors, and sometimes it is beautiful and sometimes it’s so hard, like giving birth, so painful, I just can’t take the pain. And I weave that too. I weave wishing I could see him grow up. I weave seeing him as a six year old boy, tall, in first grade, sweet and silly and quiet. I imagine him like is daddy. What he would smell like. I weave his baby smell, his breath.
I love you, Otto. I miss you so much. I wish you were here. Like your sisters are here. Tomorrow for your birthday, we will celebrate you with beautiful things. We will celebrate the beauty of life, the beauty of a simple day, the way the light changes as the sun moves, the way food tastes, the way the big ocean moves, the sand under our feet, the breeze on the delicate hair of our faces, we will eat cupcakes and touch your memorial stone and put beautiful rose petals all around it. It’s always such a beautiful day, August 22nd. Happy Birthday, my sweet love. Thank you for your love.
