We made a speedy trip to see my family over New Year’s, and this morning the whole gang of us had brunch. I asked my sister-in-law about a good friend of hers whose baby died earlier in 2009.
It was a brief conversation but it brought tears to my eyes a couple of times. The thing that killed me was when she told me they’d hung a stocking for the baby. Aaggh, it still brings tears to my eyes. Can you imagine? Empty arms, quiet house, and a stocking for the baby who never heard her mother call her name.
I’ve only met my SIL’s friend a couple of times, and it surprised me that I was teary-eyed during our conversation. I was thinking about it afterward, wondering why. Here’s what I think: I think that one of the gifts of motherhood is the recognition of the treasure we’ve been given. Do you know what I mean? The treasure itself is one gift; seeing its real value is still another.
Sometimes I worry that the big picture doesn’t come through for my kids. I’m afraid I get so busy saying “blow your nose hang your clothes wipe your feet brush your teeth quiet quiet quiet will you LISTEN already?” –- so busy that they think the hygiene or the manners or the chores are my top priority when really, my top priority is to teach them about love. I want to love them the best I can, and to teach them to think, in every situation, “What is the loving thing to do here?” I want them to know down in their bones that the greatest of these is love -– love and not snot management. (Although I have to ask -– does anyone else find that it takes boys a long time to figure out how to deal with snot?)
It’s a cliché that you don’t know how much you’ll love your children until you become a mother but you know, things get to be clichés because they’re true. I think I am sad for this woman because I know what she’s missing. I know that the fringe of 4-year-old eyelashes, closed in sleep, is about the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen. I know the delight of laughing out loud at a perfectly timed joke from my 13yo, and the pleasant puzzlement I feel when one of my middle boys stumps me with a question I can’t even begin to answer. I know the visceral pleasure of smelling my baby’s sweet milky breath.
That might be the most intimate smell I know: the smell of my blood, fashioned into my milk, offered to my baby, assimilated into her body, breathed back into me. It is like my baby speaking to me, saying, “I was once a part of you, and now you are a part of me.” The closeness of pregnancy is not the closeness of infancy which is not the closeness of adolescence. But on this solemnity of the Mother of God, I am asking her to pray for my children and me, that we might stay close all along the way. I am wondering what it must have been like to breathe in God’s very breath, and asking her to pray, too, that we might love her Son as dearly as she did.
I am also praying for my SIL’s friend, who has a new baby on the way but who is not finished grieving the one she lost less than a year ago. Will you say a prayer for her too?
We crossed the Ohio River this afternoon and Joe said, “That big bridge makes me nervous. What if it breaks while we’re driving across it and we fall into the water?” I said, “Oh, honey, there’s no need to be nervous. It’s a strong bridge. Besides, God is sovereign over everything, and there are much worse fates than going to heaven together with your whole family.” He said, “You’re right! I hope it does crash! I want to go to heaven with my whole family.”
I can certainly think of ways I'd rather go. Even so, the sentiment makes me want to say, Me too, sweetie. Me too.
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