Remembering Our Son

Cain’s memorial service was Sunday, and I wish I could say that it provided me another form of closure, but sadly it didn’t.  I suppose I was hoping some huge weight would be lifted from my shoulders,  that by having another service, another chance to honor Cain’s memory, that it might make me feel better.  Then I realized that nothing is going to make me feel better right now.  I simply have to grieve because I have lost that which is most precious to me.  I have been trying to impose a time line on my grief, and that is impossible.  It’s not fair to me, and it’s not fair to Cain.   

It’s hard to have closure when you lose a child, especially a perinatal loss.  There are so many things you never got to do with and for your baby. There are no memories of rocking your child to sleep, no memories of seeing that precious smile. There are very little actual memories of the little one you lost. However, there are months of memories from them growing inside you. That’s what I have with Cain.   Those memories of his kicks, him responding to Coop’s voice, seeing him three times a week via the ultrasound.  I saw him suck his thumb. I saw him hide from the camera (must take after his daddy on that one).  I saw milestones, though different from the ones other new moms see, yet no one will ask me about those.  That’s part of what is so hard about perinatal loss.  No one wants to ask you about your child because it is too uncomfortable for them. They don’t know how to approach you, so they start with a brief, “How are you doing,” while not really wanting the honest answer to that question because it would terrify them.  “How am I doing” honestly is I am just making it day-to­-day right now.  I lie awake at night reliving the birth and death of my child. I replay scenarios of things I could have done differently. At times, I think the grief is going to consume all of me.  I cry when I see newborns. I cry when I see pregnant women.  I cry sometimes without knowing what triggered the emotion. I just want to see my child.  That’s really how I am doing.

I want people to know the vibrant little boy that I knew within me. I want them to know what a fighter he was.  Despite all the testing, he weathered the storm.  He came into this world alive, fighting, and although he didn’t win his battle, he was survivor. He was a life changer.   In his brief time on this earth, he touched more lives than I will in a lifetime.  He taught me, along with so many others, how precious life is, how we should hold every moment as though we aren’t promised another because we aren't.   I want them to know, to remember my son the way I do because although he died, in his short time, he lived.