Three

Owen, shortly after you died and were born, a colleague of your father's sent us a wind chime. It has an angel on the top and a pendant with your name and birthday engraved on it.

When looking for a place to hang the wind chime, we discovered a nail sticking out of an enormous maple tree in our backyard. We hadn't put the nail there and had never noticed it before. We hung the wind chime from that nail and in the years since I have come to think of that as your tree. When I look up from the kitchen sink, I can see your tree. As I open and close the blinds in my bedroom each day, your tree is both first thing I see in the morning on waking and the last at night before sleeping.

Yesterday, one large leafy green sprout appeared at the bottom of that tree. This morning when I opened the blinds, I discovered it had blossomed into the most incredible purple flower.

Happy Birthday little man, you are never forgotten.

Rain

After over a week of gorgeous sunny summer days, I woke up this morning to a dull gray rain. Finally, it feels as if the world mourns with me, and for that I am thankful. Mother Nature and I, we have not forgotten. We still grieve the loss of a tiny boy with wavy brown hair and big feet.

Tomorrow it will be three years. Still I say your name. Owen, my Owen. I carry you with me.

Learning

I'm still learning how to be Owen's mother. I'm sorry to say it has not come naturally to me.

I struggle to find a way to make him part of our lives in a current way. To somehow confirm to myself that he was here and that his life and death mattered.

That he was more than just loss.


Thank you to Carly of To Write Their Names in the Sand for this beautiful image. As she knows only too well, sometimes words aren't adequate.

Celebration

Owen, today I am going to try to celebrate you.

To remember only how it felt to hold you in my arms. To remember the love and joy, yes joy, I felt when I gazed at your face for the first time. The sadness and sorrow came before and after, in those moments there was only a love so all encompassing that I knew I was in the presence of something larger than myself.

Owen, I had been so afraid of what would happen in those moments- would I be able to look at you, hold you, love you? But when I saw you, it was like looking at the face of G-d. You were so beautiful. You were perfect. You were an angel on earth. I am thankful that for a short while you were mine to hold.

Happy Birthday little man.

Frozen

Two years ago today I woke up and knew he was gone. I tried to pretend for as long as I could, but I knew. I still feel physically sick when I allow myself to remember how in instant I knew I was suddenly alone. That knowing was the worst part and in some ways I have been alone ever since. Although Owen was born tomorrow, today is the day I lost him. This is the second anniversary of the worst day of my life.

All those terrible moments, just frozen in my mind. I wonder will this day always be like this?

Waiting

We went to the cemetery this weekend again. I like that J & K get more and more comfortable there. Is that wrong? We planted some new flowers for him and cleaned his stone. Its morbid but I can't help but wonder what if anything is left of him.


It will be two years on July 30. God, two years, how did that happen? I remember him and I wonder how I kept going, how I keep going; how life kept on, keeps on moving. At the same time, I know there is a part of me that is frozen there. A part of me that will continue to relive July 29 & 30 2007 for the rest of my life. As if somehow, sometime I will remember those days with a different ending. One where I get to keep my baby boy.

Breath

It still takes my breath away when I think about what happened, what I lost. The memories are different now, fuzzier around the edges. I think about it sometimes almost like watching a movie. I remember each detail but in a softer way.

All too often I find myself remembering and feeling sorry for that poor poor woman and then it hits me again like a brick wall.

That poor woman was me, is me.

I gave birth on that day to a beautiful little boy with dark hair and big feet. He was perfect and he was dead.

I loved him.

I love him.

It takes my breath away.