The Namesake
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This is Meg’s first post as a regular contributor to Glow in the Woods.
Dear James,
I recently came across a document on my computer titled, Dear James. It took me a moment to realize that this was the letter I had written to James Taylor while I was newly pregnant with you.
Dear James it began….I have loved your music since the time I was 8 years old and we sang “You’ve Got a Friend” in sleepover summer camp. Your greatest hits album was my first cassette (yes, I’m that old). I walked down the aisle to a beautiful rendition of “There’s Something in the Way She Moves.” And when we went through fertility treatments, I asked the embryologist to serenade our developing embryos with the lullaby “Sweet Baby James.” The day we found out that we had made the healthy embryo that would grow to be you I told my husband your name had to be James.
You would be one year old today, April 12. I often find myself looking back on my computer, my phone, for documents, texts, anything that has the date April 11, 2021. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for. Maybe evidence of the before, the person I was the day before you died. What did she sound like? Was she happy? Was she blissfully naive? Did she know that perfectly healthy babies could die two weeks before they were due to be born? I can’t refer to her as “I” or “me” anymore because she is an entirely different person. Every cell in her body has been irrevocably changed.
There is a recording on my phone from that day. I think it must have been a butt-dial because it’s clear I didn’t mean to be recording the conversation I’m having with my friend. For ten minutes we’re debating which is better, McDonald’s or Burger King’s French fries, and once we have exhausted this weighty topic, I start to complain about how I can no longer stand up because my belly has gotten so big. I find myself listening to that part of the recording over and over again. What I wouldn’t give to return to the before - a time when I took for granted that you would be okay, when my biggest problem was my inability to roll over and my constant heartburn. The person in that recording had no idea what I know. That life can turn in a moment. That we have so little control over some of the most important things. That a loss so great can make you feel as if you have a physical gash in your heart that will never heal no matter how much time passes.
I’ve thought of writing to James Taylor again but I’m not sure what I would say.
Dear James, Thank you for sending us the autographed pop-up book of Sweet Baby James. We had displayed it on the changing table in the nursery in anticipation of our daughter’s arrival, but now it is buried beside the tree we planted in her memory.
It’s dark, but I think that James could handle this letter, his own life being marked by loss and pain. I just can’t bring myself to write it. Perhaps it’s my way of trying to keep one small connection to my old life, one where things were as simple as naming my baby after my favorite artist and living happily ever after. Maybe I’m not ready to be firmly in the after. Maybe I never will be.
Anniversaries seem like they should be a time of reflection. But on this anniversary, I do not wish to reflect. I don’t want to talk about all the things I have learned or how many unexpected “gifts” I have received since you died. Because in this moment, those things will not lessen the searing pain of missing you. I suspect that nothing ever will.
One year. 365 days living in this shitty after. I will never be the same person I was, but I take some solace in the fact that I carried you for nine months in the before and I will forever carry you with me in this after, however it may unfold.
Happy birthday my sweet baby James.
Who were you before? Do you miss that person? Do they feel like a stranger? Who have you become, or who are you becoming?