February
21, 2013 9:11
a.m
Losing
your daughter after just six days of having her is heartbreaking. Planning a funeral for a baby is
unimaginable. Living the rest of your
life feeling like a gigantic piece of your heart is forever lost is, at times,
more than you can handle. But this reality
does not end there. Nope. There’s more.
Like
when your loving, kind, compassionate, heartbroken seven year old son comes to
you before he goes to bed and asks if he can ask you a question. “Sure,” you say, “you can ask me anything. What’s on your mind?”
“Do
you think Brynna knew us?” he asks. “Do
you think she knew us, like that I am her brother and you and Dad are her
parents?”
You
take a moment, trying to figure out the best way to explain to this sweet boy,
what you feel in your own heart is true.
You ask him to close his eyes. He
does. You say, “I am talking to you now
and you can’t see me, but do you know who I am?”
“Yes,”
he says. “By the sound of your voice.”
“Right,”
you say. “Exactly. And when Brynna was
growing inside my tummy for 41 weeks, she heard all of us. She heard me, she heard Daddy, and she heard
all of her brothers. And then when she
was born, and even though she couldn’t open her eyes, she could still hear us,
and she knew when we were near her. Each
time we would talk to her or rub her back or hold her, her heart rate would go
a little bit faster and so would her breathing, like yours does when you’re
excited…so I believe very much that she knew who we were.”
“Oh,”
he says. Then his eyes well up with
un-spilled tears and he says, “I am just worried that dying hurts, and I really
don’t want to die, and I don’t want anyone else in our family to die. And there
is always a chance Mom, like when you leave and go to work each day, there is
always a chance that you might not come back.”
Then
he cries.
And
you fight with everything you’ve got left inside, to try to sum up the courage
and the knowledge and the wherewithal to answer this. Because you can’t tell this sweet boy that “nobody
else will ever die” and that “everything is going to be fine”. Not really.
Not honestly. Because he already
knows that life is not certain like that.
The blessing of naivety has been stripped away already, and he is only
seven.
So
you say to him, “that is so much to be thinking about and that must be really
scary. I am so glad you came to me to
talk about this. Your Daddy and I have
the same fears and the same heartache and we are adults and it scares us, I can’t
imagine what it must be like for you.
You will always be taken care of, you will never, ever be left
alone. No matter what happens in this
life, your Dad and I will always make sure you are safe and loved.”
And
he says, “I just really miss her, and I know I will see her again some day. But
I really want to see her now. I want to
have a long, happy life with her here.”
And
your heart breaks all over again.
Literally, you can feel it crack in your chest. Because this is not right. It is not right that a seven year old boy has
to suffer like this. Miss his sister
like this. It is too much.
But
all you can do is hug him close and offer that he can cuddle with her blanket
if he wants. He says, “yes please” and
then you continue to hold him while he cries.
And you tell him it’s okay to cry, it’s going to feel better to get it
out…
He
asks if he can sleep in your bed with you and you say, “of course.” You tell him that sometimes listening to
music helps you go to sleep and he says he, “would like to try that, and, do
you have that song?” “You know, the one
that the little girl sang at the cemetery that time when we went to see Brynn’s
name etched in stone?”
“Angels
Among Us?” you ask.
“Yes,
that one. Do you have that one Mom?”
You
do. So you call it up on your ipod, and
you push play, all the while calling out to your daughter, begging that she
comfort her brother somehow.
As
the song begins, his face relaxes and his tears slow. His breathing evens out and his body becomes
less tense. Eventually, his eyes close
and you can tell he is drifting off to sleep.
You kiss him on the forehead and wish him sweet dreams, and as you turn
over to go to sleep, in a sleepy voice he says, “it’s okay Mom, Brynn just
touched me on my toes and said she loves me and I’ll see her again someday.”
And
your heart melts. And you smile through
your tears.
