dear baby

Baby, brave baby boy. How you are missed.

You know that already but I am your mother, and so it’s my right to make sure you hear it, as it is my right to nag your brothers about eating crusts and wearing mittens. Please, sweet liam, indulge your mama. Hear me.

It is the holidays and I am surrounded with your family and it all carries on without you and in some moments I want to scream, furious, make them all stop for you. You swaddle me, rock me, bind these flailing limbs and make me still.

Everything is alive, mama, so alive, imprinted with life, even me.

I’m not supposed to still want to be left alone but I crave empty rooms like an addict.

I know, mama.

Outside this door toddlers wail over the injustice of sharing and not sharing and squashed raspberries and cracker crumbs. They blow noses and giggle at farts and form roaming packs and see imaginary tigers in the basement and I think they have either every idea of how alive they are, or none.

I see, mama.

I love you, liam.

I am, mama.

+++

Do you talk to your lost baby? Does s/he talk back?

Comments

[summer]

Every. Single. Day.
Sometimes I think I hear a voice in the wind. Usually I think I'm wrong and push on.
Still I speak. Every. Single. Day.

[niobe]

Never. But you knew that already.

[Jessie Carpenter]

I do sometimes. I usually just say his name. A few times I have looked at his photo and told him how I am trying to stay open to joy and remember the depth of what he taught me about my capacity to love. I tell him I miss him.

I have heard of an exercise in which you write a letter to your child with your dominant hand, and then write a letter back to yourself from your child in your non-dominant hand. I would like to try this.

So much of my connection with Sage was nonverbal, though, you know? Just that feeling of his little body pressed to mine, day and night. Smiles and gentle touches.

[Sally]

I'm just trying this on for size. Hope has only been gone for four months, and I'm still figuring out what feels comfortable and what feels right. Thing is, when I do, I seem to do most of the talking, and I don't seem to hear much back. Might be the stillbirth thing, I don't know. She never had a chance to be alive on this earth so I feel like I almost really don't know her, even though I carried her for nearly 41 weeks. It is all so complicated.
I do write to her though. Private words scrawled out each night in a diary. This I feel more comfortable with. I think as time moves along, I may start to get a better sense of what she has to say to me and what I can learnfrom her. But for now, I'm just stuck in this muddy haze of grief, confused and scared and trying like crazy to figure out how to live in this world without her.

[Catherine]

I used to talk to Alex all the time. I remember begging him for an answer...why he died. Then I got my answer...and haven't talked to him since. I have tried keeping a memorial page where I write brief bits to both my lost baby boys, but it just doesn't feel right most of the time.

[janis]

I talk, I talk, I talk, but he is mostly silent, urging me to listen to the answers that are really within myself.

[Carly]

I mostly listen. I feel like he knows my heart. I don't hear his voice. I listen to my surroundings.

Beautiful conversation Kate, Thank you

[Sarah]

I talk to Ezra all the time. And when I'm lucky, oh so lucky, he does indeed respond.

[Virginia]

All the time.... I've asked him for forgiveness, told him I love him a million times, as well as I miss you, begged him to come back, asked him why...and so much more. He's never spoken back, but when I am very, very lucky, I feel him with me.

[Natalie]

Not really.

[Barbara]

I talk to George sometimes, but mostly I just picture his perfect peaceful face.

[Jill]

I talk to Andrew. He never answers. I wish he would. It might give me a bit of peace.

[Kara]

I talked to my daughter for the thousandth time yesterday, and I swear she talked back to me from heaven. I told her I loved her and how my heart hurts so much without her. She told me she loved me and she knew I loved her. I felt her above my head at that point. I think God let her come close to me to comfort me, and I thank him for that. I wish she was in my arms. It has been six months since she passed away, I miss her and love her so much.

[Gal]

I talk to Tikva all the time. Sometimes she answers, either in a bird flying across my field of vision - sometimes even a hawk just at the right moment - and sometimes in words, telling me to smile, that she's with me, that it's all okay, that she loves me and appreciates me. Sometimes I even think I hear her say she misses me too. We talk now in much the same way we talked when she was alive in the ICN... spirit to spirit.

[kimberlee]

No
Maybe I will try it.

[Jenny]

I talk to Sam in my head. I also hope he hears when I talk to his 4 year-old brother about him. And when daddy and I talk about him. He never answers, but that doesn't mean he doesn't hear us. Somehow I am sure he knows how much we love and miss him.

[Michelle]

I talk to Carina nearly every day. Mostly just to tell her I love her and miss her. I can't say she's ever answered me -- nothing definitive anyway. Nothing that sends a shiver up my spine or gives me goose bumps to let me know ... without a doubt ... that she heard, that she's with me, that she understands. I sure wish she would though ...

[Erica]

I talk, but don't think I'm in a place where I can hear him yet, or maybe he's just gone on too far ahead. Maybe I need to accept his death before I can hear him.

[Julie]

I absolutely talk to him. In the shower, when I'm alone in th house, when I go for a walk, and at the end of the day when I call my final goodnights to my living sons, I include him. Sometimes I hear him respond with words or laughter in my head, and it's nice.

I also get into deep visualization/meditation mode when I touch and hold him, imagine picking him up from his bed in the morning, sweaty and hot, and nuzzling into his neck. It can be a little painful to do this, but it's so real that I don't think it's just a memory.

I woke up in the middle of the night two days ago and heard him babbling beside me, like he did when he was a baby - "Ma ma ma ma..." At first I knew it was him, and then I thought, since I was in a hotel, it must be someone's toddler outside in the hall. But now I think not; I wouldn't have heard that soft toddler voice through hotel walls at 4am.

Anyway, my point being - the communication is absolutely still there; it's just different now. I loved your post and I'm so glad you have that connection with your sweetheart.

[ms. g]

Yes. Not every day, but often. I think I answer for him, and usually put on him a wise persona. Now that I have A, I sometimes think he talks to me through her.

[Karin]

I write letters mostly. I just posted one to/for Imogen on my blog last night. It was her 8th birthday a few days ago. Birthdays are often a time of reflection for me, of what has transpired over the year (perhaps not much?) or musings of what could be. A mixture.

Writing letters is an opportunity to touch base with where I am on this lifelong path. It's interesting to look back over the old ones and get a sense of progression which otherwise could go unnoticed. Each year when Soren's birthday rolls around, I feel a desire to learn something new. I take the opportunity to explore some ideas in a letter to him.

I don't receive answers. But it does feel conversational. I did get an 'S' written by ants in a crack in the footpath once in answer to a question I had asked Soren. I thought that was unique!

[Jen]

Yes. I tell her I love her and miss her repeatedly. Over and over and over again.

[Rosepetal]

I talk to him but he doesn't answer.