Hey Jude

Love letters to and conversations with my son

Hey Jude–That Moment When

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Sweet boy. I can define my life in so many “befores” and “afters”. There was a time when I had an identity that didn’t include your father, but that will never be the same. There was a time before I was a mother, but that will never be the same. There was a time before I lost you, but that will never be the same.

I met with a new therapist this past week. She was lovely, but par for the course when you meet with a new therapist is unpacking the things that make you. So, I quickly but carefully pulled out the pieces of your story and assembled them. You had a heartbeat when we checked in. Then suddenly you didn’t. The question of delivering via C-section…immediately, try to save you, wasn’t even up for debate. Your dad and I demanded it. It’s in our medical records, actually. Patient insisted on emergency delivery.

I didn’t mention the flash of fear looking into the white lights of the OR…what if I didn’t wake up or the last thing I said before they started surgery while I inhaled anesthesia as hard as I could to make it start sooner: Wait, I’m not under yet. And then I was.

Then I woke up. And Sean was there, and I asked what happened and he told me your name. I skipped ahead to the part where I swam in and out of druggy sleep, waking up and realizing it was real. You really weren’t there anymore. I clicked the button for more Dilauded and soon drifted back into deep but restless sleep.

I remembered the abyss. As vividly as if it were real, that moment when I looked the ledge into an emotional black hole and knew I could easily go in to that warm, velvety, inviting negative space. Knowing that if I went in, I’d never come back. So, I backed away from the ledge, and moved back to life.

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Your dad did, too, in his own way. A man broken. His handsome face squeezed with pain as he held you, his beautiful, perfect four-pound thirty-three-week-old son, and said, “That little boy might save my life.” There was no question of doubt that you were in heaven, among the angels and back in the embrace of God. Chosen for reasons unknown to be there and not here.

But part of you did stay. You stayed in both of us for your father started a faith journey because of you that led him to choose God and his faith and to become the best friend, the best father, the best husband, the best Christian. No, he wasn’t perfect, but he was good and genuine. Because of you, because of God, he became an amazing man in spite of everything that had previously transpired against him in this life, things that would’ve turned a weaker man into a hedonistic sinner.

While I believe that perhaps saving your father’s life was indeed a part of God’s greater plan, I also know that my decision to choose life when I backed away from the abyss was also part of your beautiful purpose and of a greater plan. That I feel sure of. The only other thing I feel certain of is that there is still much to be done. You’re mine forever, and you live in me forever. You will influence me forever, just like your sisters, but also uniquely.

Thank you for being you. I miss you so much, but I love that you are mine and what you have done for your father and me. Tell daddy I love him. I love you, my sweet boy. One day.

Hey Jude—The View from Five Years Up the Mountain

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Hello, my sweet boy. Tonight, I’m going to dinner with friends from church. We’ll dine at a nice downtown restaurant—Chuck’s Fish. I can see our party, thirty-something women, the day’s stress lines smoothed away with fresh applications of make-up, our hair glossy and styled…or at least shaken out of the typical scraggly ponytail, and our dresses…too flirtatious for Sunday School, but too nice for Target. To the other diners and our servers, we’ll look like a gaggle of moms, out for a much-needed night away from the husband and the kids.

While they won’t be wrong per say as we are all indeed moms, they will be mistaken for the cause for the occasion. Today marks what would have been the due date for one of the women in our group. She was due with twins who as I understand were conceived after a long and difficult battle and whose very conceptions were nothing shy of miraculous.

I say “as I understand” because I don’t know this mom, but I’ve walked if not in her shoes then down a similar path. I’m ashamed to admit that when I found out that she already had a daughter, a fraction of me was relieved, not because her daughter in makes up for the absences in her life, but because I know that having already had Lillianne when we lost you helped me cope; Lillianne was a reason to pick myself up and to be courageous, to get out of bed and face the day.

After I came home from the hospital, I remember wanting to clean the house, to undecorate from Christmas before your funeral. I didn’t care that it was December twenty-ninth or that the twelve days of Christmas actually starts after Christmas or that you’re supposed to keep your decorations up until the Feast of the Epiphany. I just wanted to get Christmas out. I’d ordered photos of you to be printed, so we could put them up at your funeral, the only birthday party you’d ever have, and at the house after the funeral, so the people who came to visit could see how beautiful you were.

That night, all of the lights were on in the house. Where the corridor spills into the den, I stopped, kneeled down very carefully—having just had a C-section, I couldn’t pick Lillianne up, and hugged your then eighteen-month-old sister and said, “You have no idea how much I’m counting on you right now.” In short, Lillianne was essential to my healing and to my strength after you died.

I soon considered myself fortunate…as fortunate as a mother who has lost a baby can, that you weren’t my first. In the pregnancy after loss support group I joined on Facebook, I soon lost count of the number of grieving and despairing mothers who’d lost their first baby, and many shared stories not only of their sorrow but also of their frustration over the “support” friends and family gave them.

For many women who lose a baby, well-intended yet unwitting friends and family say so many wrong things:

  • You’re young—you can always have another one.
  • There is always adoption. (Often said to those who battle to have babies with or without a miscarriage, stillbirth, or loss after birth. While yes, adoption is an amazing gift to give to a child who needs a loving home and to one’s self, it has nothing to do with the pain and loss of infertility or other loss.)
  • At least you weren’t that far along. (This is common with first trimester losses and is absurd. Early loss mothers often suffer their losses in silence. What is more, they, like the rest of us, never have a pregnancy afterward where they aren’t riddled with anxiety and fear.)
  • Thank goodness you already have other children. (Said in cases where people have other children, which…yes, thank God for my other child; however, Lillianne isn’t Jude, and he isn’t her. My heart has a special place that belongs only to Jude, and none of my babies, none before and none after, can fill that space. This is often hard for moms who are blessed enough to have rainbow babies, babies after loss, to cope with. Many pregnancy after loss moms report a mix of anguish and joy when they meet their rainbow, the realization that even though they have a beautiful, living, healthy baby to love and to celebrate, that baby will never be the baby or babies that they lost.)
  • Everything happens for a reason. (This can also be “It’s God’s plan.”)

In truth, I felt incredibly uncomfortable with the last reason because unlike some people, I do believe that our lives are purposeful. I love that we can sometimes and often find a greater purpose or sense in our chaotic world, a world where order is literally created from chaos down to the molecular level. We live in a divinely designed world, but grief and loss are painful and are terrible. It can be hard for many to wrap their heads around that those unpleasant things are also by design.

That said, while I believe that life is purposeful and that God indeed has a plan, and while I also believe that we can derive meaning and beauty from most anything, even the ugliest of things, I’ve come to realize that it’s never okay to remind someone who is aching with grief and sadness that “everything happens for a reason”. They will come to that when and if they are ready. Telling a grieving mother that her baby died for a reason or because God was trying to get her attention is like telling her that she got what was coming to her. It just creates pain and cognitive dissonance.

The other thing that people cannot understand is how a mother or father feels when they lose a baby or babies…at any age or stage. Most people are horrified, and they can’t imagine, especially if they are already parents. For most parents, losing one of their babies is a gut-wrenching fear, something they know that happens but that they believe will never happen to them, much like when we get into a car, we believe that we won’t be the one to get into the fender bender. That kind of ego is good. It gives us the confidence to brave the world on a daily basis, to put our children out there, to send them to school, to give them keys to a car at age sixteen. We know that school shootings happen and that foolhardy teens with no sense of danger get into fatal, high-speed car crashes every day, but we assume that won’t be our child. Most of us are lucky.

I remember one semester, perhaps the semester where I was expecting you, I was teaching a composition class at the University of South Alabama in the evening. One of my favorite things about evening classes is that I usually have more non-traditional students, students who have matured into adulthood enough to really value their educational experience, and by that I mean, to embrace what we’re doing in English composition (because it’s awesome).

That semester, I had a student. He was a tall, attractive young man in his mid-twenties who’d moved to Mobile from Florida. He wrote a paper about the frustrations of online dating. He was lonely but struggled to find a mate in the texting, Facebooking, hooking up culture of his Millennial peers. One evening as class wrapped up, he asked about feedback on his rough draft. In discussing the paper, he admitted he’d been in a long-term relationship prior to moving and that he’d almost become a father with his ex-girlfriend. He said that he and his girlfriend had become pregnant but didn’t realize it until they were fairly far along. They’d been happy once they realized they were expecting and quickly embraced the idea that they’d become parents together; however, somewhere between twenty and thirty weeks, they lost the baby.

He said he was sad, but he also said it was for the best. The relationship dissolved, so, how could it not be for the best? I expressed my sympathy, but at the same time, I agreed to myself that it must have been for the best. They were two unwed young people still trying to figure it out. Adding kids to that mix is like throwing a drowning man a cinderblock.

In hindsight, I wish I’d have been more sympathetic; I wish I’d realized that while he learned to live with his loss and to find a way to see the glass half full, there was a depth to his pain that scraped the bottom of the glass, a pain I couldn’t possibly have understood until I lost you

While that young man is probably married now with more children, but I’m sure he thinks about that baby, what they’d be like, how old they’d be…the same things I wonder about you.

Yesterday, I met a woman at my mother’s store who admitted she lost her son in his twenties. He was at work, and he and his best friend were simultaneously electrocuted. “He would be fifty-five now,” she said.

I have watched my best friend’s mother brush her hand across her son’s name on his headstone. He passed away twenty years ago when his sister, my best friend, and I were sixteen. I wept at your funeral when my best friend’s father collapsed into tears in a torrent of empathy and grief. I’ve seen a childhood friend’s mother post link after link and meme after meme to express a bottomless sorrow in the short year and a half after her youngest son passed away unexpectedly in his late twenties.

You, my Jude, will be five-years-old come December 26. In that time, I have started to climb the endless mountain of grief. I’m no longer in the pit of my despair.

I no longer feel threatened by the chasm of sorrow, the one that sucks a broken soul into it and takes their life in the way that the mother of the other man who was electrocuted grieved herself to death a few short months after her son died.

I no longer feel wounded, upset, hurt, and empty to see a pregnant woman or a woman with a new baby. That feeling faded after a couple of years. Now, I feel pure joy. I’m giddy for other people in their hope and in the blossoming of new life.

I’m no longer prone to lachrymose episodes at Target, in the car, on my pillow in the wee hours of the morning, in the shower, or any other place where the pain of reality capriciously strikes like a lightning bolt, where emptiness engulfs in a single gulp.

In fact, I no longer want people to pity me. I realize that sounds bizarre, but I like to be able to talk about you; however, I don’t need people to become moist and mournful when I mention you among my four children because I do have four children, and I am proud of all of you. I want to talk about all of you. It just so happens one of my babies is in heaven.

It is challenging to control the knee-jerk, “It’s okay,” in response to the sorrowful, “I’m so sorry,” that comes when I mention that I have an angel baby. It’s not okay. It will never be okay. It’s okay actually just means that I’m okay. While I’m only at about base camp one, I’m also not at the bottom of the mountain.

From my (almost) five-year vantage point, I can see down a ways, and because of those who have loved and lost and lived before me, I can see a ways up, too. For those who are trekking these sometimes lonely mountain trails with me, take comfort in knowing that you’re not alone. Even if you can’t see the people walking beside you, behind you, and ahead of you, they’re there. You’re with them at the store, in traffic, at the restaurant, at work. They just don’t know your story, and you don’t know theirs. It’s for this reason it’s not only important to be kind to others but also to yourself. I’ve found the more I share my story, the more and more people I see walking alongside me. I know the terrain gets rough here and there, and there will be times, especially on your birthday, little man, where I am weak, where I slip, stop, and weep. I’m able to pull myself back up, though, and keep walking because I’ve seen those ahead of me do it.

It’s in this way that our losses are beautiful. Like an invisible thread of angels, you, my son and those other children, connect us. Weaving illuminated strands in and out of one another, you are the tether that we hold onto, that flows through our hearts and souls, and that allows us to reach out, ahead, and backward to others who are in pain and to say, “Let me help you. I understand. It’s okay to hurt. Share your burden and come walk with me. We are all in this together.” And so on we go.

Thank you, my sweet boy, for being beautiful. I loved you before I met you. I loved you more when I met you, and just as with your sisters, my love for you grows with each passing day. Until we meet again, my little heart.

 

 

Hey Jude — Not My Son

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In loving memory of my sweet bright-smiling misfit and absolute delight Andrew King and to the kind and all-around lovely Bobby Harper. I love you both.

Hey Jude – Not My Son

What person, upon finding out that they’re going to be a parent, doesn’t consciously or subconsciously negotiate with God? Not my baby. Not my baby to leave my body before I meet him. Not my baby to be born sick and suffering. Not my baby to get sick later. Not my baby to be hurt physically or emotionally by life’s harsh winds, perpetually whipping around the world. Not my baby to be psychologically damaged. Not my baby to suffer from addiction. Not my baby to be unloved. Not my baby to have any more heartache than one must. Not my baby to make my mistakes. Not my baby to leave this place, for whatever reason, ahead of me.

A short lifetime ago, I spent much of my free time during undergraduate school working with my mom’s 5th grade students. I remember being surprised¾and “feeling old”–when I was working at USA and was getting a coffee from the student center and a freshman recognized me. He was one of the “kids” in 5th grade my freshman year of college.

Working with the fifth graders was fun. It was their last year of elementary school and in many ways, a last year of innocence. Certainly, that was the case for me. Socially, I struggled to navigate middle school, a reality that wasn’t helped by my appearances¾braces and glasses¾or by my predilection for smiley faces (the ‘60s were very trendy). Those smiley face keychains clinking off of my backpack were bullseyes for bullies and mean kids, and while I didn’t suffer the same as two other incredibly socially isolated children (one of whom, looking back, most likely had autism), after three years, I was damaged.

And so it was bittersweet, being with classes of little 10 and 11-year-olds in the days before they “graduated”, crying and singing along to Vitamin C’s “Graduation” song, assigning special significance when one of their names appeared in the song. I only ever hoped the best for these innocent little people.

While love is in many ways the greatest gift we have as humans and sharing and giving it freely can do powerful things, love cannot prevent loss.

This morning, I learned that for the second time within the past year, one of those precious children passed away. I laid awake in bed in the wee hours of the morning thinking of his younger brother and of his mother who now consciously or subconsciously asking God, why my son?

Between shockwaves, the black hole of loss feels all encompassing. The ever-widening chasm as the reality and finality of this thing too unfathomable to fully comprehend, engulfs her. Breathing is painful. The all-consuming and single thought is that surely, this is a nightmare. But night falls and morning comes as time cruelly persists. Anger at time, at its coldness, at its deliberate insistence on moving forward instead of backward, the way it should, the way it must, so that whatever circumstances led to that which cannot be undone, can be changed.

Because, as we all do, those parents among us whose children left too soon, we will rethink how things could’ve gone, should’ve gone, over and over and over, and for a while, we will be dizzy with confusion as to how things occurred the way that they did and not some other way.

Next, we will look for someone, anyone to blame. Whose fault was this, and how can I make them pay? As soon as this thought occurs comes the reality that there is nothing in this world that could make it okay. No amount of money. No quantity of tears of apology.

Instead, we realize that there’s nothing that we wouldn’t give. No amount of money or comfort or warmth or luxury or nourishment that we wouldn’t immediately purge just to have our baby back. Why had no one thought to ask if we were willing to trade before they made the choice to take our baby?

These thoughts don’t all come at once. They come over the course of days and weeks. In the meanwhile, the gaping wound left by unanaesthetized amputation of your soul starts to scar.

I’ve learned to live with the fact that my little Jude isn’t here, the step between Lillianne and Eilie, who I never even got to meet. I often wonder about my little boy, what he’d be like, what he’d like, how he’d play with his sisters. I don’t dream in detail. I don’t have any memories other than those of his loss and a few sensory memories of how he moved when he was alive that are so faded, they’re nearly invisible.

To that end, I don’t suppose to understand how the mothers of these boys, who weren’t even and who were just barely 30-years-old, feel. I don’t suppose to understand how the mothers of others who I know feel. Nor do I suppose to suggest our losses are the same. All tragic losses are unique as is all grief; however, there is a shared component.

The amputation of something essential is the same for all of us, and so this terrible thing has the power to unite us, to enable us to help one another, to pray for each other.

There is no purpose in asking why or in pleading not my. Every day is a gift, one we take for granted, and one that lately, with Sean’s illness, that I am forcibly reminded of (and of how often I take it for granted). While we are all imperfect people living imperfect lives, this, this life, is all we have.

I haven’t always taken lemons and made lemonade. I cannot be unaffected by the past. I recognize the many occasions in life that have stunted me, and despite my age and my experiences, in some ways, I still feel like a little girl. Perhaps that’s because I crave security, certainty, something most children possess. I go back to a time when I was 10-years-old, and like those little fifth graders at E.R. Dickson, where they live in my mind, everything was as it should be.

Hey Jude — Making the Most of This Life

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Dear Jude,

Hey you. I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve written. Sometimes, I try too hard to think of what to say or of saying it the right way when what I should do is just talk to you, the way I talk to your sisters. In fact, I should probably think before I speak with them…some of the time, anyway.

In four months, you’ll be four-years-old. I’ve been looking at our friend’s children who are turning four and thinking, “Oh wow, he’d be such a little person right now.” Specifically, I watched little Catherine at her birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese as she wandered around seemingly lost but also quite self-assured in the way that only preschoolers can be. She was wearing a Bat Girl costume just ‘cause. What would you like? Dinosaurs? Trucks? Space? Bugs? Balls? Cars? Costumes? I told Sean that I bet you’d love to watch the Earth program on Netflix that he likes to turn on and watch with the girls in the evenings.

What would you like to eat? I’d like to think you’d be somewhere between Lillianne and Eilie…a little finicky but not so much that your entire diet is comprised of goldfish crackers and organic milk (like Eilie’s does).

I imagine you playing with the gusto of a little boy. You were by far the busiest baby. Your movements had no rhyme or reason—you just wanted to be on the go.

As I visualize the happier aspects of what your life would be like, I neglect to imagine the challenges, like getting you to listen. Would you be a good listener? I kind of feel like you’d be Lillianne made over and maybe a little wilder…less imagination, but more action-packed. I really would give anything to be able to fuss at you when you’re naughty or when you wake the baby or fight with your sisters over toys. I’d give anything to be able to feel like I was suffering from simultaneous rage strokes and heart-attacks because I’m so overwhelmed.

I’m sure every parent who lost a baby before she ever met them feels this way just like I’m sure every parent who lost a baby after meeting them—and perhaps fussing at them or feeling frustrated because of lack of time or sleep or whatever felt ashamed and possibly tortured with guilt.

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The emotions that come from losing a baby or a child at any age are so nuanced they defy logic. The perspective, too, shifts paradigms.

To begin, you realize how unimportant everything else is compared to those little lives. Money. Work. Legacy. House. Status…whatever, is completely irrelevant. You’d give it all away and never ask to have it back just to have that person back. The irony is that no one is standing around wheeling and dealing and willing to make that offer.

Then, you learn to live with what happened, with the pain of the loss or the grief. I won’t speak for everyone, but I know that in our / my case, the faith that I didn’t even realize I had enabled me to grow in ways that I never imagined. While I wouldn’t wish our loss on anyone, I also wouldn’t begrudge anyone experiencing the absolute love and comfort and peace that we were given after losing Jude…in the weeks, months, and years.

To begin, Jude helped me realize one of the hardest lessons of all, which is that we are not in control. I still struggle with that one, to be honest, but I also know that the things that make me hit the emergency brake on my brain—like when I imagine a freak-accident, our child running across someone’s driveway as they’re backing out, a car wreck, choking on a grape—are things I can’t control just as are the medical maladies that paralyze me with fear.

Last week, a little girl who suddenly developed a deadly brain tumor lost her life.  I look at my vibrant and healthy little girls and take it for granted. I take for granted that none of my children were born with some other kind of cancer or allergy or genetic disorder that at any moment could cause them to cross beyond the veil; however, I have friends who have babies with these problems, and I’m perpetually awed by their faith and resilience. I know that it’s ironic given what happened with Jude, but I can’t imagine.

But then I realize that the fear isn’t what God want us to feel. These challenges, these terrifying, awful, challenges have purpose if we allow them to, and they can transform us in ways that we never realized.

To begin, one of the most remarkable things I learned when I realized how little control I had was that…that’s actually quite okay. Someone else is in control, and I can only do my very best.

Another thing is that one of the most beautiful aspects of tragedy is when you’re able to use what happened to you to help others. This, too, is a Biblical precept as Paul advised in his letters for people to take their struggles and to help those who struggle similarly. Sometimes, I allow myself to revisit Jude’s funeral in my mind, and the people who stand out the most are the ones who came because they’d also lost children or suffered a traumatic loss.

Finally, I understand why suffering is important. In nearly four years, I’ve grown so much emotionally and mentally. I’m more understanding, loving, and compassionate. I’m not perfect, but I want to do better all of the time for my family and my babies. In our Sunday School class a few weeks ago, we talked about why suffering is necessary or why God allows bad things to happen.

I think about things like that a lot because for people who find people like me, people who have faith, to be tedious is that we often can’t explain why suffering is allowed…natural disasters, pedophiles, hatred, evil, etc. I won’t go back to Genesis to explain that, but I will say I started to think of a story idea one day (a total non-starter) about a world where there was no pain, no suffering, no bad, etc. While I realize that Christians believe that is the very definition of heaven, I also cannot imagine being as grateful or as compassionate as I am now if not for suffering. I tried to picture what the conflict would be in this story, and there wouldn’t be. How would the characters grow? Without conflict, how would they evolve into a better version of themselves? So, I believe suffering is allowed in part because it allows us to behave in a way that shows our courage, our love, our compassion, our patience, and our forgiveness for our fellow man…all virtues that God shows to us on a regular basis.

As I look ahead, I know my future will include more suffering, more trials, more challenges to the aspects of my person that I am sometimes too afraid to relinquish. I don’t fear the unknown nor the unexpected. I don’t allow myself to worry about what may or may not happen. I don’t worry about what suffering life will bring. I believe in taking each day as it comes and in doing my best every day and in being kind to myself because sometimes, I think we forget to be kind to ourselves, especially when we are dealing with something that aggrieves us, when we think perhaps we could have done better or had we acted differently, things would have been different.

So, my Jude, thank you for all of that. I love to imagine what kind of little boy you’d be if you were here, but I know that’s only ever going to be fiction. The reality is that the little boy you are now is more than I ever could have conceived or hoped for.

One day, I’ll see you again. For now, you’re in my life, and you’re in my heart. You sweet, beautiful boy. Mommy misses you.

PS: I love that today was one of “your” days because I feel like you were there with our family and your dad this morning. Big hugs.

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Hey Jude — Changing Seasons

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My dear, sweet boy,

In less than two hours, I’ll take your sisters to your Emie & Daddy Joe’s house and will drop them off and will head to the hospital to have your last little sibling who we still only know as Mystery Baby.

Today is December 21, 2017.  It’s the first day of winter.  It’s the start of a new season.  In 2012, I began my stumbling (and somewhat unsteady and unwilling, at least at first) foray into motherhood.  For the past five-and-a-half years, spare five months, I have been keeping another person alive with my own body; after today, I’ll have another year to go, God-willing.

I’m not complaining. God knows I’d give anything to have been able to be part of the group of women who–rightfully deserve to–complain about the challenges of motherhood and womanhood as they nurse, feed, love, cradle, coddle, and fret over their cherubic, growing babies.  I’d give anything to not know what it was like to have to say goodbye before I said hello.

But, here we are–there you are in heaven; here I am on Earth.  Losing you nearly three years ago (how are you only five days away from being three?) initiated a season within a season, one in which pregnancy and childbirth were characterized by fear and anxiety, but also one in which I–as a person and a woman, grew up immeasurably.  I didn’t realize how young I was until I lost you.  I also didn’t realize how much I didn’t know about peace and faith or myself.  I would rather have you here and have learned those lessons the hard way, but my goodness, you’ve done more for me than anyone has, and you do it unceasingly.

I’m a 34-year-old woman, getting ready to have her last C-section, her last baby.  I’m about to bid my childbearing years goodbye and to look ahead toward the future, a future in which I am a mother to four children, no matter whether I can only relate to them spiritually and emotionally or physically as well.  Today truly ends and begins a season of my life.

I only came to the realization of the parallel between the actually day–December 21–and the symbolism last night, but before that, something else that represents the way life comes full circle happened.

We’d walked to your Emie & Daddy Joe’s house yesterday evening. We stood at the end of the long driveway, and I asked my dad if I could take one of his oranges.  He grows a huge variety of citrus in the front and back yards. He consented and led me toward the backyard.  I followed, surprised and a little confused that he didn’t want to give me one of the sweet oranges that were hanging on the tree nearest to us.

As I waddled down the driveway, I thought about December 2014.  I thought about Dad’s grapefruits. He has a mammoth and prolific tree in his backyard that for years has produced hundreds–hundreds–of grapefruit.  After I lost you, when I was numb and had no taste or zest for life whatsoever, Dad kept bringing me grapefruit from his tree. He brought grapefruits to me in the hospital.  Other people brought food, and usually, by the time a visitor left or I’d stopped crying, the food was spoiled, and so when I could and would eat, I would peel into a grapefruit and eat the juicy, tart-sweet spoils.  It was like comfort food from God.

Of course, in 2015, as I wrote about here, the tree sustained trauma due to a bitterly cold frost that early winter.  The tree barely produced.  It was a metaphor for me…for what I’d gone through, for what I was going through.

The following season, the tree produced again; though, its nature had changed.  This year, I couldn’t recall if the tree was producing a single fruit.  A downed branch earlier in the summer and some other issues led me to believe that the special tree might not live much longer…let along produce fruit.

Dad opened the metal gate leading to the pool area behind which stands the tree.  He reached into the tree and pulled a large, low-hanging grapefruit from the branches.  “Oh wow, Dad. This means so much,” I said, hugging him.

“I grew that one especially for you.  I thought that one’s for my Amy,” he replied as we turned to go.

I don’t believe in luck or charming one’s fate with rituals, but the simplicity behind my dad’s thoughtfulness and the timing of the situation, could not have been more profound for me in that moment or more comforting.  I realized, too, that my dad’s gesture symbolized something else, the ability to overcome a past.

Growing up, Dad and I weren’t particularly close. Too similar, we clashed. I was emotional and high strung; he was pragmatic yet high strung in his own ways. Both of us were intense and clever and determinedly right.  It was really stressful for both of us.  In my teens and 20s, I was bothered by the reality that if something were to happen to my dad, he’d have been a person I loved but never knew.

After I grew up some more, got married, and learned a thing or two about life, Dad and I started talking more and more and more.  I don’t know his whole story; he still surprises me with aspects of his past that I am intrigued and entertained by.  I do know, though, the story he and I share, and the fact that we have that shows me how much it’s possible to grow and to blossom even after the hardest of seasons.

My darling Jude.  I should probably go start getting ready.  It’s almost time.  No matter what happens today, you, your sisters, and this last little baby are all my darlings.  I’m thankful for the past five-and-a-half years.  They made me who I am, but I’m also thankful to turn the page and to look toward a future shaped by my past but not ruled by it.

 

As always, I love you forever, I like you for always. As long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.

Love,

Mommy

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Hey Jude – Why the Truth Matters

/ adelcambre / Leave a comment

Dear Jude,

In one month, you’ll turn three. Three-years-old. I remember Lillianne’s third birthday party. It was at the park, on the playground. Eilie was only just four-months-old and just hung on to whoever was holding her like a sweet little koala nugget. Lillianne was so cute. She wore a blue dress with white polka dots and her little yellow “heeled” sandals. We set up tables and even though it was 9:00 that June morning, it was swelteringly hot. Lillianne laughed and ran around, sliding and swinging. She didn’t even care that her friends weren’t there yet; if you’d have been there, you’d have been a year and a half and no doubt, hot on her heels, sliding and swinging a few steps behind her with shouts of, “Yee-yan,” because you couldn’t say Lillianne.

By now, those wobbly steps and funny baby talks would’ve turned into running at full tilt and chattering in full sentences…we’d know what your favorite foods and colors and characters are. We’d have fussed at you for rule-breaking, worried if we were raising you “okay”, thought about your future…all of the things parents do. I’d be planning your birthday party, of course, and, of course, complaining about how “hard” it is to do things during the holidays.

 

The reality is that I’m doing none of those things. I’m expecting your baby brother or sister to be delivered at 36 weeks and 5 days in three weeks and three days (but who’s counting?) on December 21. I’m anxiously anticipating the arrival of your last sibling five days before your birthday.

The day before yesterday, Mystery Baby turned 33 weeks; for you, 33 weeks was the last day of your life with us. We only had you with us for 33 weeks. If I’d known I had to form a lifetime of memories in 33 weeks, I wonder how much I’d have done differently?

 

Yesterday, you’d have been 35 months. We went to Atlanta over the holiday weekend to get Mystery Baby’s little animal from the Georgia Aquarium, an accidental tradition that now means so much. Your Jude Whale, by the way, is much loved and is passed around by your sisters. We got your last little sibling a Harbor Seal. I meant to get a sea lion, but oh well. It’s a cute and soft little thing, and I think Mystery Baby will like it. You’d have loved Jude Whale. It’s kind of ironic that your little whale was pure white, completely innocent and angelic, like you. I always think of you when I see the belugas now. They’re so docile and gentle and ethereal, like you.

I digress. Saturday night, I had a hard time going to sleep. I felt unwell. It was probably fatigue or just un-actualized anxiety. Thirty-three weeks. I had a few cramps and mentally plotted exactly what we’d do if I went into labor or if there was an emergency. Thankfully, there wasn’t.

I woke up at 4 a.m. and thought about the night we lost you. I thought about the things that happened and about how recently, I’ve read about other moms whose babies were having decels and other issues like you were. Those babies were delivered, and those babies lived. Your dad and I have assuaged our grief over and over by telling ourselves that something else might have been wrong. I’ve consoled myself with the idea that you at least were in a safe, warm place full of love when your life left this Earth. But I do wonder…and wonder…and wonder…time and time again, for nearly three years now, what if. If they’d have delivered you, would you have lived? There are plenty of pre-term babies born every day who are sustained in NICUs and who live as perfectly healthy and happy children.

Being the skeptic that I am, I wonder and continue to wonder if someone really knows what happened or who has an idea of what happened, and they’re not saying because they’d rather protect people within the institution (Providence Hospital in Mobile, AL) or the institution itself. The thing is, I’m well outside the statute of limitations for any legal action, and honestly, I don’t want anyone’s money. There is on amount of money on this Earth that can possibly make up for you not being here.

The reality is that I just want to know everything. I want to know why if there’s a why. I want to know how if someone knows how. I want to know if someone made a mistake. I want to hear, “I’m sorry,” if they did. I want to know that because of you, someone has changed everything about the way they practice medicine and has made the right decision and has saved so many baby’s lives. I’d like to know that. I just want to know the truth, whatever it is, because I’d like to think it would take some of the burden from my grief.

 

Yesterday, one month before you turned three, we drove home from Atlanta. Having slept poorly, I was tired and uncharacteristically emotional. Irrationally, I engaged your dad in a lengthy conversation about past pains that really don’t impact our marriage now. After all, when better to trap someone in an emotional argument about the past than on a four-and-a-half hour car ride.

I cried three times yesterday. Once was in a Hardee’s bathroom (we’ll call this a “low point”), once at home while I was unpacking. We’ll call this a “revelation moment” because it was when I took my Jude Bear (the one I got at the hospital nearly three years ago when I lost you) out of my suitcase that I started crying all over again. It’s also when it became clear that the real reason I was upset was because of you. It’s because I miss you. I love you so much, and I miss you, and I really just want some kind of closure. I just want to know the truth about what happened. I realize no one can assure me that your outcome would or wouldn’t have been different had the doctor read the ultrasound correctly; had she decided to deliver; had they rushed us straight to the Children’s & Women’s hospital with the NICU, etc. However, I feel someone can tell us if—in hindsight, they made a mistake. They made a bad call. They weren’t as attentive as they should have been. I have no idea. Did they do everything correctly?

I don’t want someone to blame because that won’t change anything. I just want closure. Is that too much to ask? There’s that line that goes, “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!” I can handle the truth. I don’t think it’s fair for me to have anything but the truth.

I think that’s true for all moms who’ve suffered a loss. We deserve the truth. After all, I had a healthy pregnancy with Lillianne. I had a healthy pregnancy with Eilie. Mystery Baby is thus far very healthy. In these final three and a half weeks of me ever being pregnant again, I’m absolutely gripped with anxiety and paranoia because I don’t know what happened or if your passing was ultimately the result of human error (i.e., the choice of inaction) or if it was truly something completely mysterious. Is it normal for babies with decelerations, severe tachycardia and bradycardia to not be delivered immediately? Or rather, more importantly, how much of the heartbeats being read were mine, and how many were yours? What happened?

 

Most days, I’m not a crazy person. Most days, I don’t cry. Most days, I don’t rehash painful topics with your father. Yesterday just wasn’t most days. I’m sorry for days like that, that I have to have days like that. I’m sorry that I hate being pregnant because of the constant anxiety. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I was never a fan of being pregnant, but after losing to “causes unknown”, pregnancy is terrorizing. I’ve visited the hospital three times during this pregnancy for legitimate concerns (of course, everything is fine; everything is always fine) for $125 a pop (shout out to my sponsor, Visa). I’m more afraid of getting a steroid shot and of Mystery Baby needing NICU time than I am excited to meet Mystery Baby in three weeks. Your dad cannot stand when I’m pregnant because I’m so high strung. It’s truly unfortunate. I feel so alone so often because being the one who’s pregnant, I’m literally the only one who can determine if there’s a problem or whatever. I’ve spent six months wondering if this weird little pain in my leg is a blood clot; it’s been checked twice. It’s not. It keeps getting worse, like the anxiety.

 

I wish above all things that I could hug you and tell you in your sweet ear the story about what happened. Instead, I’ll spend the rest of my life wishing. Wishing I knew. Wishing I could hug you. Wishing that I didn’t have two potential realities: the one where you live and the one where we have Eilie because I know that had life not taken the course it did, we wouldn’t have Eilie. The little seeds that made her wouldn’t have been there when and if we ever made baby three. It would be different seeds, a different life. A different kid. A different everything.

But, alas, that’s not this reality. In this reality, you are with me in spirit. I cannot hug you or hold you. We have Eilie, who is so sweet and fun and funny, and we have Mystery Baby, who I hope we get to raise on Earth. I guess we’ll see. As the weeks, days, and hours crawl by, I become more and more anxious and despondent. I lessen my grip on hope just in case it happens again. I do this because I don’t know what happened. That’s the price of not knowing the whole and absolute truth.

I love you and miss you, sweet boy. In my heart, I’m always hugging you and smiling at your laughing eyes. 

Love,

Mommy

Hey Jude – My Little Gidding

/ adelcambre / Leave a comment

Dear Jude,

Today you’d be 2 1/2 if….

Previously I thought I wouldn’t think of the age you’d be or visualize how you’d be growing. But, I remember Lillianne at 2 1/2, and I can picture you. You’d almost be out of toddlerhood, and you’d no doubt be giving your sister a run for her money in terms of the pending threenage years. It’s incredible how different our life’s dynamic would be if….

As you know, of course, I don’t dwell in “if” because so much would be different, I wouldn’t recognize the world I live in or the one I would live in. All I can do is appreciate what I have, what memories, what moments, and what I’ve become for what those things are.

There’s a line from T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding” that was in a book I’ve read a few times recently. It reminds me of you, which compelled me to read the poem. The line reads,

The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree

Are of equal duration.

A rose and a yew have very different life spans, but each are lives fully lived. You and I have very different life spans, but that doesn’t mean your life is any less full, precious, or important than mine. In fact, I believe you’ve had a bigger impact on my life than I have.

It’s interesting that one of Eliot’s themes is that suffering is essential before life can begin. The poem contains images of something being burned down before it is rebuilt. There are themes of past, present, and future in the poem all of which are unavoidably comparable to birth and to life and death.

Both your father and I have felt that the suffering we endured and still endure as well as the lessons we learn have had the transformative effect that’s can only come from being utterly destroyed and reconstructed. It is remarkable and even miraculous that such a powerful rebirth can come from something so small and brief and delicate as your perfect little life.

Though I know you’re not here for me to hug, I’m holding you close to my heart all of the time. As long as I live, so do you for we are of equal duration. I love you very much, always and forever, my Little Gidding, my Jude, my rose, my little hero.

 

 

Hey Jude – When I Think of You

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Little Jude. I think about you a lot. More than you know. They way I think about you is different from how I think of your sisters because they live here, and you live in heaven. Of course, all three of you live in my heart.

I think of the little boy you would be now. Two. Such a precious age. You’d be walking and talking. You and Lillianne would be busy little playmates. Lillianne wouldn’t be dragging Eilie around the house behind the Mickey Mouse scooter; it would be you, and there might not even be a Mickey Mouse scooter because it’s Eilie’s scooter. In those moments when Lillianne tries to talk to Eilie like she’s an older child, and Eilie’s just…not…I think of you.

When we go to the playground, and Lillianne can’t find any other kids to play with, I think of you. You’d be chasing her around, climbing everything she climbed, and she would tell you how to do it and she’d cheer you on and give you a pull to get you to the top of the slide faster. 

Today we took Lillianne to her first Mardi Gras parade (and Eilie, too). It would’ve been your first parade, I thought, as I watched Lillianne on Daddy’s shoulders and could see the olive-skinned, shiny, dark brown haired cherub you’d have been with gold-flecked chocolate-colored eyes and a Cupid’s bow lip and rosy cheeks. I didn’t see you sitting on anyone’s shoulders, but I could just see you up there next to Lillianne. I thought, “Jude would’ve loved this.”

When new people ask how many kids I have, I think of you because I have to explain about my baby in heaven, and they always look so sad and say they’re sorry. Yes, of course, I’m sorry, too, and I’m sad, but I also know how God used you to help make me a better and more faithful person. I’m not perfect, but I want to be a better person all of the time. You made me more compassionate. You gave us Eilie. I can’t really fathom what the parallel universe that now constantly runs alongside my life would be like if you were here. 

When I look at your father, I think of you. His life, like mine, is steadily undergoing a transformation that I don’t think could’ve or would’ve happened if not for what God’s done for him through you. 

I don’t understand why we had to lose you. I really don’t. You were such a busy thing. I like to think about your alive time. It was such a fleeting but such a special time. And then you were gone to heaven. 

So, I’m thankful for the times I think of you and imagine you with us or what’s going on in that parallel universe. I’m thankful that you’re still so very alive in my heart and that there are so many wonderful things that happen to me and your daddy and your sisters that I can say, “Jude helped us do that.” I love making new memories with you. 

I love you, sweet baby boy. I’m thinking of you.

Hey Jude – Coping with Loss

/ adelcambre / 4 Comments

Dear readers…this piece was difficult for me to decide to share. Please understand that I am not making a political statement nor am I making light of anyone’s feelings. I am expressing a genuine concern for the generation that walks behind me. Following the presidential election, which was easily the most polarizing election of my lifetime, I heard and witnessed (via Internet) instances where young people were unable to cope. I heard a video where a girl (20-something, maybe?) wept that someone needed to “fix this” (election results) or she was going to kill herself. I heard that young people were given coloring books and puppies by major universities to “cope” with their disappointment and loss.

 

While I respectfully understand the soothing and meditative merits of coloring (and other artistic pursuits), I am also very concerned with the frailty of this generation, and so, as is the nature of my second year of writing my Letters to Jude, I must say this, and I implore you to listen with an open mind and an open soul because I want you, person who feels damaged and destroyed right now (regardless as to why), to feel my strength and resilience and to take what I have and to make it your own and to let it give you the confidence that I have, which is that there is nothing that I cannot accomplish and that there is nothing that will destroy or defeat me.

 

Suicide…

 

The world was distorted as I drove down Cottage Hill Road. A poppy ‘80s tune pulsed on the radio as I rolled to a stop at a looming red light. The air was stiff and stifled as if I was a one-woman dirge. Who are these other people, going about their normal day, as if the universe hadn’t just shifted? How can this song be on? This isn’t appropriate. This song should not be on. This shouldn’t be happening. He would’ve heard this song as a kid. He would’ve known this song. Possibly danced around to it. I replayed the events over and over in my mind. He left his home at some point in the day with his gun. He was off on his ATV. They found him at around 2 a.m. The police found him. The aftermath was and is irreversible. The last time I saw him was a year ago. Should I have helped? Yes. Would anything be different. No idea…I’ll never know if even the slightest effort could’ve helped a kind-hearted family member avoid the irreversible. I wish I’d tried. And thus, disappointment doesn’t cover this…the devastation, the trauma.

 

There were no puppies or coloring books to make it all better.

 

9/11…

 

In 2001, the Top ’40 station, WABB, was filled with static and talking and news as I drove the negligible distance from my cultural anthropology class to my art history II class..  I changed the station. More news. I listened for a minute and tried to understand what in the world was going on.

 

World Trade Center.

Pentagon.

Hit by an airplane?

 

I got out of my car disgusted with myself. I was 115 lbs that morning. Did you get that? One hundred. And fifteen. Fat. Disgusting. Pounds. My pants, size zero, mind you, weren’t even loose anymore. I couldn’t grab at the sagging fabric at the back of my thighs. My XS Banana Republic tie-dye tank…practically clingy at the bodice. Pathetic. I took a seat in my freshman art history class and quickly journaled about what I heard on the radio (though, I had no sense of what it meant); then class started, and I was swept a the world of Byzantine art..

 

Dr. Seuss canceled psychology that day, which really wasn’t that uncommon. He canceled class roughly 50% of the time, so, woo hoo! I went to Mom’s school up the road to see her. The kids would be at recess. Mrs. Christopher was in tears. Ten year olds, who would now be 26 year-olds (dear Lord), were playing on the playground so innocently oblivious to what would ultimately be the new world order. Mom explained that what I thought was a tragic accident was no accident. Someone or many some ones had intentionally flown 747s into the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon and killed people. A lot of people.

 

My fifth class of the day started at 3:15 p.m. Mr. Monotone made our test optional, but I took it anyway. I was so far removed from reality. I was this twerpy narcissistic kid who literally mostly remembered my weight from 9/11. I was 115 lbs. Oh, and 9/11 happened, and I was 18 years old.
That night, I started to hear new words. Terrorism. Al-Qaeda. Osama Bin Laden.

 

Guess what? No one gave me a therapy puppy or a coloring book to make it all better for me. Come to think of it, no one gave me that crap for my eating disorder either. I never thought I needed nor deserved them; though, I will say, there were times, when I truly thought I would die from my eating disorder that I prayed. Hard. I prayed that I would wake up the next day. I prayed that I wouldn’t die…that I wouldn’t be found dead on the bathroom floor in the wake of my shame. I faced my fear, and I fought it…and eight years later, I won.

 

My Jude…

 

And then, on December 26, 2014…I grew up. Like really, grew up. I lost my son. He was fine all day on Christmas Eve. I noticed he wasn’t moving as much late Christmas Day. On December 26, we checked in to the doctor’s office. The baby had a heartbeat. We were put on the monitor at the hospital and within hours, he was gone.

 

“There’s no heartbeat.”

 

He’d just moved…literally just moved…and so we rushed into an emergency C-section. When I came out, I asked my husband, “How’s my baby?” and I knew from the look on his face.

 

“I named him Jude. Jude David. Is that okay?” he said brokenly.

 

“Yeah. Hey Jude…” I started to sing in a still medically-induced state, and Sean took up the chorus.

 

We were rolled back toward my room, and like a manifestation from God, our Priest was standing there. Father David accompanied us to our room, and prayed with us. As he started to leave, I, still in a pitiable state between life and anesthesia, began to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” and Father David turned around and returned to my bedside, and Sean joined him in sacred prayer. Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven….. My speech was slurred, and I stumbled over words. I’ve never felt so empty or broken than in the days where my healing and my life truly began.

 

No one brought me a puppy or a coloring book, and in those frail, fragile moments that severed my ties between adolescence and reality, I didn’t care. Those things wouldn’t have made it all better. You know what did make it better? God.

 

At some point during Jude’s funeral, I found peace. I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t seeking it. I was open to a grief journey. I was open to having a bottomless hole of pain and loss and suffering in my life, but God fill the void with something intangible yet so real I could almost touch it.

 

It was faith. Faith. I can’t describe how much my son and the agony of losing him transformed me.

 

To those who think that their latest devastation is the end of the world…it’s not unless you choose to let it be. I could’ve gone off of a ledge and died inside and out at many points in my life. I could’ve never said to my eating disorder, “I will not let you kill me,” and then called on God for help. I could’ve never done the thing I said I couldn’t do, which is lose a child and live, if not for God.

 

What I’m saying is life is challenging, hard, sometimes unfair, and sometimes unbearable. You will bleed. You will break. You will be decimated at times. And then…you can either curl up in a ball and die, or you can get stronger and smarter and better and wiser and assert yourself.

 

For those who don’t believe in God, let me tell you, God is real. My faith is real. If all you have are coloring books and puppies and free passes, I feel sorry for you. You can literally destroy my body, but you won’t kill me. I mean that. I’m not afraid of losing or disappointment or tragedy or devastation. I don’t welcome it, but it cannot and will not break me because of my God. I encourage you to have what I’m having.

 

Afterthought: Dear readers…I am not trying to force my faith on you, but I am trying to implore you to recognize that life will never get easier. It’s the trials and how we handle them that define us. It’s okay to break. It’s okay to cry, but we must all always reassemble ourselves and find strength through tragedy and adversity. There are many worse things to happen than losing a political election (or other things). Losing hope and losing faith are two of those things.

 

You cannot rely on superficial crutches to get you through the things that will challenge your hope and faith. If you do, then you will surely lose them. Instead, find something within yourself that is there and that has always been there that is truly worth fighting for and that imbues you with an unbreakable fortitude (for believers, that is God, and truly, it is the valuable quality one could possess).

 

I pray for you, gentle reader, whoever you are and whatever you’re fighting with and for. I pray you rely on the right things.

 

 

ASIDE

 

For Dear America:

 

I pray for this country. I pray for our leader to seek wisdom and guidance from God and that regardless of our leadership, that God intercede through that leader to guide us all to greater glory. Remember that there is always light in darkness if we look to it, gentle reader. The light is always there, and it is in times in which we seek light during periods of darkness that we are most brave and most faithful.

Hey Jude — Everybody Hurts

/ adelcambre / Leave a comment

Hi, Sweetie.

It’s really hard to believe that today and for four hours now, it’s been New Year’s Eve. Last year, I was also awake after a relatively sleepless night.

I remember waking up while the morning was still dark and finding your obituary online.

I remember deliberating for roughly an hour before deciding if and how to share it on social media.

I remember reading it and weeping.

I remember how beautiful and perfect you were because I look at your photo every day.

This year, I’m awake because the phantom monster that is prenatal anxiety came back. Your sister has moved her position or is moving differently, whichever; regardless, I haven’t been satisfied with her level of activity to allow myself to rest, so here we are. (Thankfully, we have a doctor’s appointment today.)

 

Everybody Hurts

After your funeral last year, your father and I talked as we both had different experiences during your wake and afterward at home with the family; we had different interactions and conversations. One thing that your daddy’s uncle said that still stands out and has resonated harder and harder lately is that, “There’s more than one way to lose a son.”

Some people might find this comment selfish given the circumstances, but I didn’t (particularly because I know his situation). After all, I find writing these love letters to you to be an inherently selfish and somewhat narcissistic activity…as though I’m the only person who’s suffered a painful loss. I cannot even begin to count the number of people who’ve suffered significant, life-changing losses –many harder to bear than mine—with a quieter dignity; however, we all cope differently (and I like to stay in touch with you).

What this comment and my reflection of it inspired is the realization that everybody hurts. Thus, I’ve started trying to take the journey others have endured.

Last night, I was thinking of my doctor who I know delivered a still baby on Mother’s Day last year. I wondered what it must be like to do that, to bring a non-living baby into the world, then to have to “do your job” at the same time. How taxing that must be on a person’s soul. I have another doctor friend who said that patients and patient families can be…well, not understanding. So, then I imagined the doctor who, while inwardly mourning an innocent loss, is simultaneously on the receiving end of a wounded person’s vitriol? The anger quickly becomes blame, and the doctor, who is certainly more than just someone doing their job, has to take it. Not only do they have to take it, they have to take it home; they internalize it; they analyze every step and moment to determine if and how the circumstances could’ve been different.

My doctor has told me numerous times how often she has revisited your life in her care in the hopes of finding something to answer the question of why or how…and there’s nothing. You –like your sisters—were perfect; you were perfect until you weren’t. None of her colleagues (including my high risk doctor) had answers either, which I hope eased her soul at least where we’re concerned; however, I know she hurt for us.

A week after your funeral last year, the bug guy came around to do his job. I kept the appointment on January 7 because…well, I just did. J arrived on time, and because we were in a fog and had forgotten the appointment, we were still in our pajamas and were rather unmade. J didn’t mind; he came in, and perhaps feeling it necessary to explain our appearances or all of the flowers, we told him about Jude.

J told us about his second baby, a little girl, born with a trifecta of genetic defects that meant she could cry but couldn’t produce sound, that she lacked the proper anatomical cavity for going to the bathroom, and that her heart had issues. For eight months, J and his wife endured…they endured surgeries, their baby’s quiet yet obvious suffering, and endless what-ifs and God-knows what else. At the end of eight long months, it became obvious that there was little more modern medicine could do to sustain their baby’s life, and they had to decide to allow their infant daughter’s suffering to end naturally.

His story filled me with sympathy and gratitude (I was appreciative that we never had to make those kinds of decisions for you, Jude…that you never knew Earthly pain and suffering or even the sensation of cold; I felt very blessed that my baby had only ever known warmth, love, and comfort). What J and his wife endured would have turned me into human road kill; I can’t fathom where my strength would’ve come from to be the people he and his wife had to be those eight months. In telling us this, he wasn’t trying to diminish the significance of our loss; rather, he was a person with pain sharing a story. But they survived; they had two more children after losing their second. J was among the first people who helped me to realize that everybody hurts.

 

Everybody Copes

Last year, just after we lost you I wrote what would be my first letter to you. I wrote about how we decided on your name, how during a tribute concert with friends where “Hey Jude” was played, I felt that was what I wanted your name to be because I wanted you to be able to make me a better person, to have a more open heart, and to be more hopeful. After a long couple of years of home renovations, struggles to advance financial, and marital and familial growing pains, I was rather guarded, which I didn’t like.

You, in your tiny and infinite perfection, have enabled me to let go of all of those burdens. One year later, because of you, the stresses of those damaging growing pains have been lessened. Your father and I are happier and healthier together; your sister is, well, she’s always been a little light, but she talks now. As you can see, I’ve just had the best year as a freelance writer and editor, and this was only year one.

It’s very odd to reflect and to say that so much about this past year has been good when it’s also been so painful, when missing you has been so hard; however, one emotion I couldn’t find relative to losing you was anger. I never got angry. You were and are too beautiful; you’re too perfect. Anger is ugly, negative, and generally ignorant as far as emotions go. You deserve better, and so I’ve only reserved the best for you.

I think this (or something similar) is whatever most who suffer a tragic loss comes around to…a pacifying acceptance that they can cope with and live with and maybe even grow from. Yes, they walk closer to the veil the separates life from death; they stop to look at it as they contemplate its larger significance. Somehow, seeing the veil flutter carelessly in the wind, walking alongside it, and realizing its significance, they find that life is too brief, too fragile, too precious to do anything less than to live (and what’s more, to live a little extra for those just beyond the veil).

I love you, sweet Jude. Thank you for everything this past year; you’ve given me so much…so much more than I could’ve anticipated when you and I started this unanticipated journey last year. Thank you for living through me and for giving me more to live for. You are and will always be my perfect middle child.

PS: I miss you.