A Lot to Celebrate and Remember

The doctor’s slight frame embraced me as she wrapped her thin arms around my defeated shoulders. Her empathic touch was unable to revive out baby. It was June 18, 2013.  My tears had not yet remembered what to do when we were told there was no longer a heartbeat. Stuck in my eyelids, the salty rivers waited for the dam to break. We chose the medication this time.We wanted to elimate the dreadful wait for the baby to find its way out naturally. As I waited for the doctor in the exam room the following day, the back of my bare legs crinkling the paper beneath. The door opened. The doctor looked at my computerized chart and said, “I didn’t know it was your birthday. We could have waited until tomorrow to do this.” 

Waiting until tomorrow would not have changed the outcome. It would not have reignited the tiny flicker on the screen. It would not have erased the nightmares derived from the stillness in the previous day’s black and white images. It would not have given us the baby we had tried so hard to keep this time.

It only took a few hours, and by later that evening, our baby boy was officially gone. 

June 19th could be an horrendous day, forever reminding us of the pain of losing a third baby. It could ruin my birthday each year, causing me to forget that it is a day to celebrate life–my life. It could destroy the notion of a happy Father’s Day every time the holiday lands on this day. Instead, we remember our Baby G. We grieve not having him with us, yet recognize that he was part of our journey to Evelyn.