Remembering Our Angels

Our Sweet Baby Cain

Today is PAIL Awareness day.  Today, I join many other mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents,family members and friends, in remembering and honoring their sweet children whose lives were cut short.  Through this journey of infant loss, I have come to know many wonderful people, most of them mothers, whose children's names I remember along with mine today. I speak their names to let the world know that is okay.  We won't fall apart, and even if we do, it's okay because we are happy to hear our child's name. Trust me, we don't hear it enough. Often, it is spoken in whispers as if it were a secret. But my child is not a secret. Cain was a beautiful son, a beautiful brother, a beautiful person, and I want the world to know that. He is forever a part of our family, just as our living children, Cooper and Casen, are. He will always, always be my son.  Death can never change that. And I know other parents who are traveling through this harrowing journey of grief feel the same way.

So if you know or love someone who has lost a child, remind them today that you remember their child.  Send them an encouraging message, speak their child's name, light a candle in memory and honor of their short life. For like the flame, their life flickered out before the world could see it's light, but that doesn't mean they don't still shine.

Hugs to those with empty arms and aching hearts who look to heaven a little more today with longing, with tears and with smiles, knowing their babies are there.