The light slants harsh and low across the floor
before I’m ready for night -
the air smells like snow that will not fall
but the snow that lingers dirty on the ground
after the holiday lights are packed away.
I don’t need a calendar to know
this is the season that marks your birth.
I count each hour, living again the moments --
the first pang of fear, the stillness within
the shabbat candles we lit, stalling the inevitable snowy drive
the sympathetic looks exchanged across my heavy belly
was that your birthday?
Or the moment I told your brother that
he would get his trip to grandma’s
but there would be no baby
the man in the elevator who held my hand
I never told him why he was laughing alone
telling his age old jokes about birthing in elevators.
Or that moment in the wee hours of the next morning
When your still body slid out of mine with a silent sudden emptiness.
That moment never felt like a birthday
just the inevitable stretching of loss from private to public
as you slid away and away and away from me
and now back to private again
as I hold this season of your memory
secret.
I speak your name to the heavy clouds,
But there is no one else who remembers the
sound of those syllables
or remembers that part of my heart is buried
under snow
remembering another day
not a birthday
but the day we dropped handful of dirt
on your unimaginably small coffin
and walked away through muddy, dirty snow.

just beautiful. thank you so much for sharing this here. can so relate, as the years pass.

Telling my 5 year old son at the time that his baby brother was not coming home was one of the hardest things I had to do in my life...
Thanks for sharing such a beautiful piece we both wished you didn’t have to write.

Thank you for your beautiful piece of writing. I find myself back here, struggling, missing, yearning for our son, who we lost 5 yrs ago this week. I have so appreciated the solidarity and comfort this place has provided over the years, but I have never been able to write. Until now. Until I read your piece which so perfectly mirrors my experience. I felt his stillness on January 8th and learned of his death hrs later. I can still feel the echoes of my uncontrollable wailing in my chest and the sad eyes of the Doctor called in to tell me the news that others already knew but didn't want to share. I remember my husbands tears and the agony of that night. My eyes gazed upon his beautiful face early the next morning. We put our handful of soil on his unimaginably small coffin on the 10th, my due date. Every year I have visited his grave near the anniversary of our loss and I have to remove the snow from the headstone to reveal the name we gave him and the single date etched there- Jan 9. He was not truly born on that date and he did not die on that date, but that date I was able to hold him in my arms. Every year I stare at his name, still in disbelief that my son lies there separated from me by earth and snow, and I feel that emptiness that I quietly carry throb and glow. I resist the urge to lie in the snow just to feel close to him again. There is no doubt that this time of year is the hardest. I miss our son. It is a lonely longing. It is as you say, private. And that is hard.
However, today I am grateful. I am grateful that my grief has morphed from that crushing, debilitating pain that allowed me to live only from breath to breath into something else. I am grateful that today I can appreciate the way the sun feels on my face, the comfort of a warm cup of tea, the love in my husbands embrace, the music in my son and daughter's laughter and the magic in their smiles. For those of you reading who are still living breath to breath trying to imagine how you are going to survive this devastation, please hold on. Breathe even when you feel like you can't, eat when you aren't hungry, drink when you aren't thirsty and please know that those moments that feel so long and painful will eventually be the thing that allows you to find some peace. Time. The pain never goes away. We will never be the same. A part of us will always be missing and hallow but eventually the time between breaths won't feel so long and even though it seems impossible, somehow, someway you will be ready to find moments of happiness again. Believe. Thank you again turtle for your beautiful writing and inspiring me to share tonight. Wishing everyone peace and healing.

Turtle,
Read this beautiful but sad poem with tears in my eyes. Next Monday would be my stillborn R's 6th birthday...
His funeral was also snowy, the snow pure as he was.
Me and my husband seem to be the only ones to remember him. We will always remember and love our precious babies.
Thank you for sharing...