A Year in the Life

Happy Birthday to you 

Happy Birthday to you 

Happy Birthday dear Malcolm

Happy Birthday to you

A small flame is flickering on each candle early in the morning as I imagine what it might have been like to celebrate Malcolm’s first birthday. Instead of these candles being placed on a cake, they are illuminating the altar we built to honor the day we met him. 

No one is singing happy birthday. The sounds of our sniffs and heavy sighs are the only sounds to be heard over our furnace running on this cold winter morning. And if you listen even more closely, you might even sense the tears rolling down our cheeks. 

It’s been 365 days, and as one of my students said this morning, “He was born a year ago?! Man, that feels like yesterday!” It feels hard to believe that our journey has brought us to this date in time, to yet again, accept that our child is dead. 

My mind is enveloped by the engrained (and endeared) memory of his auburn hair under that perfectly knitted off-white cap and the sensation of his cold cheeks from each kiss I gave his forehead knowing that I only had so many. 

Fitz and I giggled while holding his hands, seeming so large for a newborn, debating about which one of us gave him the “lanky” genes. We were able to smile as we ran our fingers along the bottom of his long feet, which had a second toe bigger than the first, just like mine. And yet, we were constantly rotating in sobs as his skin lacked the flush of an active circulatory system, reminding us that although our baby was here with us, our time with him was limited. 

I am still in awe that after 11 hours of labor, including 45 minutes of pushing, and a c-section that somehow I was coherent enough to remember what it felt like to hold him for each of the short durations that I did. All while fearing that if I held him too long, that I would warm him too much and shorten the time that we had together. 

Rather than feeling like today is a birthday for Malcolm, it feels like we can only honor the anniversary of meeting his precious body. There is no celebratory feeling and we are left with the feeling of simply honoring the day & a half that we spent with him, in addition to the 41 weeks and 6 days of pregnancy we had together. 

The days of pregnancy were much brighter than the days surrounding his birth. I traveled, made memories, celebrated, danced hard, and laughed at the idea of this baby being born twerking. For weeks and months following his birth, I had wished nothing more than to return to those days. To return to the confidence that I had about our pregnancy, to the trust that I had in the process, to the joy of imagining the world where our baby would join in for all the fun experienced while in-utero. 

Just as I am and have been thankful for the joy brought to our pregnancy with Malcolm, I could not be more thankful for our time with Malcolm’s body. I could not be more thankful for the recommendation to capture photos of our sweet boy. I could not be more thankful for all of the love that surrounds Fitz and I, and therefore surrounds Malcolm in these moments, as well as the moments of the past year.

Malcolm is our first child, a crucial member of our family, and will always be a bringer of so many gifts. Our next child will know about their brother, we will continue to mention him by name, and we will continue to honor our limited time with his sweet baby body each year. Our family will only know life as it exists with Malcolm in it, despite his lack of body continuing on.

Now we prepare for an evening fire to honor him further and create a tradition that will last with our loved ones. I’m already entranced by the flame before it is lit. I’m once again imagining the sweet boy who would be- could be- should be one today, who only exists in our dreams. 

We will never be the same people that we were before Malcolm and for that I hold space for the pain & gratitude as they exist arm in arm.

Thank you sweet boy for the lessons in loss in our lives and the lives of others. 

Thank you for the connection to all babies named and unnamed who have been a loss to families like ours. 

Thank you for the understanding of how parental loss exists for some even prior to pregnancy. 

Thank you for the strong boundaries that heal, connect, and nourish on the inside and out. 

Thank you for the awareness of how to use language that honors the full spectrum of the journey to parenthood and beyond. 

Thank you for the exposure to the secondary losses & the ways in which friends and family lost the chance to play the role of aunt, uncle, grandparent, sassy friend, or anything else to your sweet self. 

Thank you for the chance to identify a new way to parent and stay connected to a child who has died. 

Thank you for helping finally give myself permission to fully acknowledge that things can suck & be full of pain, and therefore there is no room for positive washing under those circumstances. 

Thank you for the love you gave that made this loss all the more terrible. 

Your parents love you, forever more.