Missed kindergarten
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a backpack is full of hope and adventure
and discovery of who that precious child will become
in this strange formidable world that all children are called to conquer
From the archives: A Father's Day visit
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I sit down at Zoey’s grave, with M. sitting at Gus’s, and we clean. I wipe the dirt off Zoey’s gravestone. I scrub the grit out of the engraved letters of her name. It is Father’s Day, and this is how I talk to my children: in solvent and cotton swabs.
Read MoreThreads of sorrow, threads of hope
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And so I folded back the meticulously knitted arms – barely bigger than my thumb – and tucked under the hood with the twin minute functional drawstrings. And I gingerly placed that little woolen packet of broken-hearted yearning in a barren drawer in our vacant nursery, praying I’d have reason, someday, to take it out again.
Read Moreif wishes were horses
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visions of a world with 2 boys and a girl
erupt in the living room
erecting an ugly brick wall between the gifts i have
and the one that was taken back
Loved
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It feels incredibly unsatisfying that it takes but a minute to list the essential facts and stats about him. I remember saying—to the first shrink that we saw after—that he was perfect, but he was dead. I think I want, I need that ‘but’. I don’t want A being dead to count as a part of who he is. Isn’t that why people have such a hard time talking to us about our children, because they intuitively see their deadness as their essence?
Read MoreThe sibling strategies
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Your sister died but you became a big brother nevertheless, and I can see you itching to fulfil that role. If only you knew how much I want you to experience the healing that would come with a brand-new life. Sometimes when we talk about babies I will put my hand protectively over my lower belly but I don’t tell you about the changes going on inside. You don’t need to know how often our babies die, you don’t need to share my fear. So I just hug you and tell you that I would also like to have another baby, very much, and that I hope it will someday happen for us.
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