If the topic of death makes you uncomfortable, skip this post and check back next week. If you do end up reading this post in its entirety you will probably smile at the irony of this warning.
I have a giant elephant in my living room. Unfortunately he doesn’t just stay there. My current elephant – the death and birth of my baby boy – haunts me wherever I go.
It finds me every time I meet someone new. They ask a simple, non-threatening question, “How many children do you have?” Then I coil back like someone just socked me in the stomach.
How many kids do I have? That’s an interesting question. The real answer – three. I have been blessed with three beautiful boys. But one of them is no longer with us. He was stillborn last spring.
That makes the answer more difficult to define. I never really know what to say to people.
I feel guilty saying I have three kids – especially to a mother I see wrestling three young children. I have three boys, but I definitely don’t have the responsibility of raising all three right now. I do not chase around a four-year-old, 2-year-old and a 10-month old.
Technically I only have two. But I will never forget my third, and heaven knows my body won’t either.
Yes I was pregnant for 37 weeks. Yes my ankles swelled up. Yes my back felt like it was going to break and my sciatic nerve sent jolts of pain down my thigh. Yes I fought my eyelids every afternoon as I sat on the couch with my three- and one-year -year-olds wondering how I was going to stay awake until 6 p.m. when dad got home. I was tired, I was sick to my stomach and I was dying to have a baby to bring home to make it all worth it.
But I was forced to come home empty-handed and brokenhearted.
So what to do?
My children aren’t afraid to talk about their brother. I’ve heard my four-year-old proudly exclaim that he has two brothers, but one’s in heaven. Then there’s my two-year-old. He’s always telling people his brother died and he wants to play with him.
If they aren’t embarrassed about their angel brother, why am I? Maybe it’s because I’ve seen several people shrink back horrified when I tell them my baby died.
It happened just last month when I went to renew our dinosaur park passes. I forgot that last year we listed “baby” on our pass because we didn’t know yet what we were having. This year when the worker updated my information she asked what our baby’s name was. When I told her he died she looked terrified, then replied something like, “That sucks, I’m sorry.”
Yeah, it does suck. And I’m glad that worker’s “sorry,” but it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t even my poor baby’s fault. His death was out of all of our control.
Another awkward issue associated with my baby’s death is his birth-death reversal. Yes my child died before he was born. What does that mean? It means he has no birth or death certificate. Basically, he never existed.
But believe me he did. I felt him kick every time one of my piano students played an upbeat song. I felt him go crazy when I’d lie down to sleep — turning somersaults and handsprings in my womb.
I heard his heartbeat the day he died. He was alive, and he was mine.
For now I will probably continue to address the awkward elephant that tromps into my life almost daily. I will probably make people uncomfortable as I tell them I have three boys — two on earth and one in heaven.
But I can’t forget my third child – no matter how short his life was.
Boogers on the Wall 