…to my sweet little Momma,

who has made mothering down the bones an art form to be gazed at, moved by and emulated by all who are touched by her, which is another way of saying all who have ever met her. Whose mothering has extended to her children’s children, to the mother of those children, even down to the one who never drew breath but lives every day nonetheless.

…and to every mother whose child is not in her arms tonight. Whose hearts beat painfully under a burden of love that has nowhere to go, whose throats are tight and sore and weary from the tears she is so tired of holding back, but must. Every mother whose children are not thriving, not growing, nor ever will come into the fullness of themselves. For these mothers especially, for whom the English language has no name, not widow, not orphan, not even “mother”, for these mothers I wish a Happy Mother’s Day. Because in the words of one of these very mothers, angel babies do count.

…and finally, to Nathaniel Jeremiah, for making me one of these mothers, for bringing me closer than I have ever come to my dream of motherhood. Whose brief, bright flare leaves an imprint on the darkness, so that when I lose my way all I must do is close my eyes…

…and remember.

Shine on, my sweet baby boy. Oh, how I love you. Happy Mother’s Day.

I woke up this morning with that report-card feeling in my tummy. You know the one. It might have been more of a book-report feeling for you. Or a dentist’s-chair feeling. It’s the feeling deep in your tummy that makes smiling feel weird.

It’s because you know you have to do something that’s hard, or face the consequences of something you didn’t do well. Like studying or brushing your teeth.

Or growing a baby.

Oh, I know. I know it wasn’t my fault. Kind of. But I did a lot of things wrong and even though lots of people do the same things and still end up with a healthy baby, for me, that didn’t happen. For my baby, whose tests came back chromosomally normal, it is very likely something I did or something I just am caused him to die. It could have been my endometrial polyp or the fact I’m morbidly obese. Because it could have been those things, I feel I should have done more to fix them. I feel like I failed.

That’s the book-report feeling.

The dentist’s-chair feeling is because I have to let go and it’s going to be hard. I have to let go so I can do the things that will make room in my life for the new blessings to come. I have to trade the comfort of mourning for the fear that nothing will come to take its place.

This awful, awful fear that I’ll forget my baby only to realize no new joy is coming to rescue me from the emptiness.

Yet I know in my heart of hearts, in my tummy of tummies, that this fear is wrong. It doesn’t fit, doesn’t add up. One, I won’t forget Nathaniel. How could I ever? Ever? Two, new joy is promised to us again and again by our Lord.^[1] Three, it may not look exactly like the joy I had pictured for myself, but I seem to have grown up just enough to recognize that God’s imagination might be better than mine.

So it’s time. It’s time to start getting up in the morning in the vicinity of sunrise. Time to start showering and getting dressed every day and not just when I have to leave the house. It’s time … really time… to put everything away. To put Nathaniel’s bunnies and sympathy cards into their own special memory box. To make a frame of his positive test, sonogram, and name in the sand photos. To find a new place in our lives for him that allows us to move forward both with and without him.

if not this, then what?
if not him, who else?

1. John 15:10-11, Psalm 126:5, and my special favourite, Nehemiah 8:10b [↩]