Searching for my son

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Searching for my son

After Patrick’s death, my world collapsed. I went from seeing his care team every day, to not at all. They looked after The Living Babies, and I had now been transferred to the Dead Baby Department. As wonderful as these new people were, I felt like an appointment in a calendar. I had lost the day-to-day banter of the ward. A person was now required to contact me on a certain day to ask pre-prepared questions about my feelings. They had never met my child, yet the ones that had, were now lost to me. My life was now static. I’d lost my people. My house was empty. My baby was dead.

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You are loved

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You are loved

I know you’re out there, ready to pull the covers way over your head this holiday season, hoping to wake up only after “the most wonderful time of the year” has passed. I see the way you quietly choke back your pain in everyday settings, and I know the pin-prickly feeling on the backs of your eyes as you finally submit to the hot, stinging tears. There’s the awareness that there will never be another holiday with your child, that in some way this otherhood will always exist, even if time or circumstances eventually bring you a little closer to a recognizable way of life.

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The solitary in solidarity

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The solitary in solidarity

In my conscious attempt to steer clear of catastrophe, I had been focusing too much on the “how,” when it all comes down to “what” and the absence of “why.” That it is always a life too short, a death too soon, and the meaninglessness in between. So I visited Ground Zero last fall and this summer. For the first time in the four years of living barely an hour from it. I stood there in silence, daring to open up to the lives I knew were ripped apart that day. I allowed myself to believe that I knew every single parent, sibling, spouse and child who forever lost a part of their heart that day. I need not imagine. I knew.

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