The Night Before

Another cycle.
We are here again, the night before you died.

Your dad and I sit in the living room, not wanting to go to bed, feeling like we don't want tomorrow to come again, don't want it to be true again.  You died.

Four years later I still sit here and feel the shock of it.  What a beautiful boy you are.  In your body you were so full of light, so radiating love.  How we love you still.

And every year for this week it feels like we get you back in many ways. Part of me feels like I will get to hold you again, we get visits from you in different forms.  Loved ones are visited by hummingbirds, we feel you come near to us.  You are always near but the veil is thin this week. And then I think of all the cycles we will go through without you and life feels so long.

This year I hold your baby sister on your anniversary, 6 weeks old on your heaven day. I am so in love with her, amazed by her, grounded by her. I feel like I get to hold you again through her, and in this way the pain is eased.  And yet she makes me feel all we gave up with you,  the extreme thing that was asked of us, the impossible thing, of loving our beautiful son so much and then letting him die.  Letting his warm, soft sweet body become cold. Letting his spirit leave. Helping him with this.

I remember this strangeness when my Grammy was dying. She was in her late 80's, a proper time to die, and I held her feet under the covers, and they were warm, they were the feet of a person, not an old person, just lovely, warm feet. And it was so strange to know that they would grow cold and her blood would stop running and stop being her feet.  It is so strange to me, death.  That change. That shift from life and spirit in the body to the body just being, I don't know, what is it then? Cold and beloved still.  But not the same.

Oh, my son, this is so hard still.  We still love you so tremendously.  And I don't want you to leave. You already left, but still, I don't want it to happen.  I don't want this.  But it is ours.  How can this be our story? The story of the son who died? But it is who we are now.

I think you are happy now, you are fine, you know our love, and the pain is mostly on our side. I am glad you are happy. I am glad you love your sisters.  I long for a time, out of time, when we are all together, loving freely without longing.

I am writing this under the tree where we held you, four years ago, on the lawn, on that beautiful afternoon, and you felt the air, warm, and the slight breeze, and heard the hummingbird talking above us, the light filtered through this big tree's leaves, the height of summer. We were each other's, completely.  To know such love, I know we are so lucky.

And my son, I love you. I will love you forever. You have my heart, and I am devoted to you as your mama.  Help us through this night, it is so hard to accept it.  It is so precious to remember. What an intimacy, that crossing.

Thank you for all the ways you love us.  I pray my heart will open to them, and not be shut in self pity or depression. Although that is part of this at this stage for me. I love you, I love you, I love you. I send you a million kisses, up to the stars, I remember your sweet smell, your soft hair, your hands and feet and belly. I kiss them all over.

Love,
your mama

First Outfit

38 weeks. Baby sister on the way. I think of you so much, and miss you so. Thinking of what her first outfit will be, I remember the one I packed for you. A beautiful soft yellow onesie with a blue bunny, from Italy when my mom was traveling. It's tail was a real cotton tail. I loved running my hand over it because it was so soft.

And the first time you wore it was in the NICU, the night we learned you were not going to make it. We held you all afternoon and night, skin to skin, and a blankie over your back. I went to bed at midnight to get some sleep, but couldn't sleep, I just lay in the bed shaking and missing you and feeling so cold. So at 3am I got up and went in to see you. The nurse, her name was Kay, was holding you, wrapped in a blanket and reading a magazine. I loved that she took you in her arms during her shift, not letting a moment go by when you weren't held and loved. (the 5 days before was a cooling treatment where we couldn't hold him.)

She had dressed you in the lovely yellow onesie. I was a little jealous, since I hadn't put an outfit on you, but I loved that she was treating you like a beautiful, real and wonderful baby and wanted you to feel the soft and the love of those who chose it for you. She handed you to me, and I took off the blankie, and took off your onesie, because I wanted to just hold you against my skin, your warmth and my warmth. I never got used to you wearing clothes, you were just a naked boy for me.

She left us alone.

And we rocked in the glider, and fell asleep, and I felt my heart get warm again, and I stopped shaking, and I just loved you. I smelled your hair and kissed you and soaked up every moment, and watched the dawn come over the city of San Francisco, that amazing view we had from that room. The light slowly creeping in, time still happening, the planet still moving, even though I would have done anything to stop it and just keep holding you.

At 6 am I walked so slowly back to my room, so tired, and so full of love and the peace that it brings, I could sleep after being filled with those hours of closeness, knowing I had held you as much as I could, and you had felt my heart beating. My milk leaking on you, all over my shirt. I walked back to my room, ragged and full of light, devastated and complete, not caring who saw me or how I looked, how I must have looked.

 I talk to you now, knowing you are with me, and ask for your help as I wait for this baby. Wait to hold her in my arms, trying not to go crazy with the waiting and hoping for safety. Crying for you, crying for her. Waiting for the first breath again. Facing the huge mystery, the huge black, warm universe of giving birth, giving everything over, being taken over, letting go, and then...life. A cry. Love.

 The yellow onesie is in your special box, so every anniversary we can take it out and run our hands over it and remember you, when you wore it in our bed at home, and for your service with our family when you had just died. It is so precious. We love you so much, little boy. So so much.

Hello darling boy. I know it has been so long since I've written. Our talks more happen when I have a moment to look at your picture, by our bed with candle and sage, or when I am outside by your big tree, or anytime that I just miss you so much.

And since I just got back from recording an album about all the love you've given us, all we've learned, how our hearts have been molded by you, and this music is coming together with so much tenderness and ringing and beauty, that your dad and I are just sort of in heartache from it. Brings back a lot, brings us back to the time when you were here and died, and that is just overwhelming. We love you so much, and always will, I am so happy to be singing to you, and that people will get to hear this, and I hope, be comforted. I hope they hear that loving is still worth everything.

I'm remembering these little moments. The shape of your forehead. How much I tried to memorize it before I had to give you away. I remember that feeling of just loving your shapes so much. I miss you so much. I wish I still had my boy here. It does hurt. But your love has made my life better and I always want to learn to freely love moments, to be filled with contentment more than fear. To learn to just be here.

Thank you for your love, my darling.

Christmas

At Christmas we miss you so much.
We get your ornaments out from the box. And put them up on the tree. We buy you one every year.

We love you as much as we love each other, but you aren't here.
Our boy, our son, brother. We miss you so much.
I love being together with family this time of year, the baking of cookies and old traditions being brought to present, celebrating love and being inside when it's dark, drinking warm drinks, being cozy. I just wish you were here.

My mom buys you a coat every Christmas. She buys a coat your size and donates it to a little boy who needs it. The coat looked so big this year. I so wish I could see you wearing it. But I'm glad that another little boy will wear it. He deserves it and I wish him so well in his life.

This year I feel even more a need to draw you into our traditions. I'm getting you a stocking tomorrow and we will fill it with poems and notes and donations we will give to another child in your honor. I want to say your name at Christmas meals, and love you at family gatherings, light candles for you, include your name in cards. And do it without shame or worry of what people will think. This is what I feel to do this year. You are part of our Christmas, so I will include you. Your spirit.

Most people miss someone at Christmas, I know we are not alone. Loving and missing are an honor. I am glad to have loved your beautiful golden self the way I got to, to feel you move, to have you so close to my body, to kiss you and sing to you, to have my first baby. To get to have more. To miss you the rest of my life. It IS better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved.

But the tears are there. And the wondering why it had to be you. But it was you.

Anyway, I want to say I love you, my boy. It feels good to tell you. I wish I could hug your 3 year old body and kiss your face till it bugged you! You're my darling.

mama

Thank You

Just put Luna to sleep for her nap. She fell asleep in my arms, which is one of the best things in the world. We love each other so much. So wonderful to feel that, to know it and not question, to just revel in it. I stare at her for a while before I walk her to her bed. And lay her down to sleep by herself for a little while. So beautiful. Hard to walk away. Each day is so precious. And she is changing and getting so tall and saying so much.

I look at Otto's pictures on the windowsill as she is sleeping in my arms and feel my love for him, our boy. Accepting our big love for him, out in the open, telling people openly, "no, don't be sorry that you asked if she has an older sibling, because I like to talk about him." I love him, still love him, and I am so happy to talk about my son too. Luna knows him.

We are at an easier place. The heartache doesn't take over everything as it does at first. But the missing is always there, and sometimes comes over bigger. I missed him a lot at Halloween, felt dizzy by seeing all the kids, remembering Halloweens when we were so devastated to be without our child. He is always in my heart, the tenderness that filled me when I got to hold him was something I had never felt so strongly and meltingly before. He gave that to me. He made me a mama. And he gave me the gratefulness I have with Luna, knowing the preciousness of moments, of the love between mama and child, that nothing could ever replace it.

And the moment I just had, hearing the whir of the wall heater in our small house, the spin of the drier, the sunlight coming into the living room between tree branch shadows and the bleeps of the parakeet in the other room as my beautiful girl slept happily in my lap, I said Thank You. Thank you for this perfectly peaceful moment, when all is well. This was my greatest dream and it is here. Thank you.

Fall Equinox

I miss you, baby.
I remember holding you and the softness of your brown hair on my chin,
How you nestled in
Your yawn that went back and forth
Your feet, wide and thick,
Your long legs
The veins in your forehead,
their winding ways,
how they made me think of all of the tributaries of arteries and veins
that wound around and through to your heart,
to your organs,
your fingers,
the amazing universe of you,
And how you were mine.

The first face I saw as my child,
A merging of me and my love,
the wonder of that.
I wish I had so many more days to stare at you,
To learn you
and take you in.
To touch you and caress your head,
to sing to you and talk to you.

I look at the stars to see you now
I look outside and see if the skies are clear
or if there are clouds,
and if I see the specks of silver in the black,
I take comfort in the great expansion
of this universe,
of all the mysteries that I don't know,
of the way the earth moves around our star,
of the way things move so far away,
there is so much room for you to be
Somewhere.
I already know you are here with me
Somehow
And that you love me. I know and know that you love me.
That if you could you would put your small 3 year old hands
on your mommy's head,
just to feel her hair.
I love you too baby.

On this first day of fall,
the holy equinox,
I celebrate the veil thinning,
spirit seeming closer,
the elk and the deer coming out
a time when we see you more clearly.

I love you so much, my sweet little boy. and miss you.

He Was Here 3 Years Ago

This has been heavy. I wasn't expecting such heaviness. Maybe because the rest of life has been lightening up, around the year, that it is more shocking to go back into the rounds of the anniversary, the re-living of it all.

On the days it hits hard my legs are heavy, like right after Otto died. They feel like they are made of something else, a heavier earth than flesh. My hands don't work, I can't open anything, the toys or drinks that I usually can. I have anxiety, my stomach tightens up, life feels daunting and big and like, at any moment, something terrible can happen.

When you're not in this state it seems silly, it's easy to comfort someone with anxiety and say, no, the chances are so slim. You think that nothing bad can REALLY happen to you, not if you make no mistakes.

But we all make them. Not even mistakes, really, just being slightly off with your timing... A little boy in our town was killed this week in a crosswalk, going back to his car from soccer practice, with his family, and he was just walking a second or two behind them, and a driver didn't see him, and now he is gone. Four years old. This story is sunk in my stomach like a rock. Every crosswalk I see is a moment to gear up, get my senses sharp, whether I'm driving or walking. I think of this little boy, how his parents are feeling, how horrible it is.

We really are vulnerable. So the other side of it is, that right now is really good. Even though we are tired and hungry, or wish we had more money to cover the bills, or wish for more success or a bigger house, or whatever it is, the other side of this vulnerability is realizing that, since it can all be taken so suddenly, I might as well enjoy this really good moment right now, like the walk we had yesterday at dusk around the neighborhood park. "We are all alive," I told myself. "I am with my husband, my daughter, my dog, we are walking down the street to our house, and we are happy." And it becomes warm and covers my soreness and I sink into my life, into the trueness of it.

But this month has a deep darkness to it too, a deep missing, a deep tearing, I truly miss my son, my little boy, I cry really hard, my ribs constrict my lungs, knowing that, in this body, in this life, I will never see him again. It seems too hard. My whole being feels off, I can't return calls, I can hardly get the dishes done, a big part of me is gone with him. I love him and he's gone. He's my little boy, my first child, and he's gone. I want so badly to see him on the swings, hitting a tree with a stick, laughing with other little boys. Seeing how much he looks like his daddy.

This is my month to be more soundly WITH him, and part of it means that I hurt a lot. It's not a choice I make - well, part of it is. I could choose to ignore all these feelings and go crazy trying to be normal, or I could be fairly sane but really sad. It seems like it should be the opposite, but it's not. And it's much easier to choose the sad route. The feeling route.

It's beautiful to go to his grave and cover it with rose petals from his rose bush, with the leaves from the tree where we sat with him, to burn sage and kiss the stone and talk to him, to feel my body evaporating and sitting in the world of spirit, to feel my prayers to him rise up with the smoke from the sacred sage. This is the other side of the pain, the extreme beauty of love and being carried over to a big peace with the surrender to grief. The quietness of my heart after a good cry with him.

This year, in short, is no easier than others. It almost feels harder. There is some sort of realization in this triad, this 3rd year, that his time here is really over, it's not coming back, there is no way he can come back. It takes a long time for a body and soul to really sink this in.

We look at his pictures, his beauty, his soft, strong, sweet body, the comfort he took in cuddling up to his mom and dad, the love, and it is beautiful, but, let's be honest, it's horribly tragic too. This year the tragedy is in first place.

This too is part of life. Many have tragedy. I don't feel like glossing it over with anything to sweeten the story. Or make anyone feel better.

But there are things that are easier: I don't blame myself. This is pretty huge. To let that burden slide off. And I don't feel embarrassed when it comes up with strangers. I just tell them what happened. I don't worry about how they'll take it, I just tell them. I don't need them to understand or have the right reaction as much. He's my child, not theirs. Also, I know he is here, and that he loves us. He seems to let me know all the time, in ways that are special for me.

This is a long road, my friends. We are just at the beginning.