We are midway through January; keeping with the zeal of New Year’s resolutions and hope – I’m on a real organization kick in my house. Which means I’m unearthing all sorts of crazy things that I don’t even want to wonder how I acquired – like ten (TEN!) boxes of birthday candles. I’m trying to be pretty ruthless during my purge but when I came across the candles I just stopped. Because we don’t need birthday candles; it’s January and we won’t be lighting birthday candles – and we should be.
We should be planning a party; I should be practicing buttercream frosting and trying to convince myself I don’t need to try to replicate Pinterest. I’ve watched, the last 4 weeks, slowly as friends from my birth board start the celebrations for their 6 year olds. I just can’t believe he would be 6 years old! Going to school, with defined features and his own likes and dislikes. It makes me profoundly sad, that I will never know Thomas’ personality; if he would have enjoyed reading as much as his mother. Would he have his father’s mechanical brain? Every concert I attend at my niece’s school, is a bit sadder now. As I scan the 6 year olds, singing their hearts out, wondering where my son would have stood. Would he be campy and dramatic? Would he have been one of the shy kids, worried until he spotted his parents? All of these questions swirl and haunt me. It’s amazing how you can create a human, carry them, love them with every cell of your DNA – but never get the chance to learn who they would have been. And yet, this sense of unknown, this tragedy of not knowing your child, doesn’t alter that unyielding, never ending, fierce, mama bear love. Not one bit.
Thomas was supposed to be born in January, but he actually entered the world in August, about two weeks after we lost his heartbeat. There are so many significant and heartbreaking dates. To be brutally honest, sometimes I get them mixed up. Talk about maternal guilt! In August, I bring home a cake or cupcakes – we don’t sing, we don’t light candles but we acknowledge that it is a special day. A day that we *should* be singing to our son. January? January I just try to get through it…I’m barely over the emotional upheaval of the holidays. January is a month of new year, new beginnings and sadness – every year, for 6 years now. It isn’t something I dread, it isn’t something I struggle with – it just is.
This year seems to be harder. This year, the nightmares are more frequent. You know the one? When you dream that they are telling you that your baby has died, that there is no heartbeat and you have lost him. You wake up, heart beating rapidly, heart physically in pain and try to not cry. You remind yourself it was a dream and you try to breathe the pain away. Ironically, when they told my family there was no heartbeat – I was in a coma. So, how I’m reliving a moment I wasn’t conscious for is a psychological mystery. I told my husband the nightmares were plaguing me, so I was going to bed early. He naively tried to assure me we could only lose him once. Which I know isn’t true; I’ve lost him 3 times this month, at least, tears hot in my eyes in the dark of the night.
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I’m so very sorry to hear your story. I also have a story as well. My son was 6 weeks old when he passed away in his sleep (he was colicky). I miss him each and every passing day not a moment goes by I don’t thing who he would be or what he would look like. He was born Sept 13 ,2019 passed away Oct 30, 2019