[Editors note: This was supposed to go live on the 7th and for some reason got lost in the abyss of my site. I am reposting it for the date it was supposed to go live.]
For more than a decade, I hated when this day comes around every year. This date. April 7th. Thirteen years ago it fell between the 6th in which I was blissfully pregnant and naive and eager to have a baby and fell just before 8th which was the dreadful day that I had to leave the hospital alone without having ever seen or held my son.
April 7th is the one day of the year that I don’t try to pretend I am okay if I am not. I usually am not okay. I am usually sad. Maybe a day when come when I forget, but I seriously doubt that. He is my son. Living here or not, he is my son. I gave birth to him. He died. I wrote more about “what happened” over here.
When people ask how many children I have, I answer 3. That’s what they want to know. I don’t tell them 3 plus a little angel in heaven. I do think that babies’ personalities do develop in utero. Am I suppose to believe that it is a coincidence that he performed all those high kicks when I ate Mexican food or it wasn’t intentional when he would partake of the jamming of his foot as hard as he could into my ribs when I would rock out to the radio, but protest immensely when Barry Mannilow would play? Not on your life. Personality, baby.
I also don’t say things like “Oh my angel is watching down on me and smiling.” I don’t think he is looking down on us at all. If he is, he most likely is laughing his ass off and the way the kids give me a run for my money and how we do it right back. I would rather believe that his spirit lives on and parties with the kickass relatives already kicking back in the afterlife.
I do sometimes play the “what-if” game with myself. But not as often as I used to. It just doesn’t do anyone any good.
So today is the day I gave birth for the first time. Today is also the day that we decided our family is complete and we are ready to call it quits on the baby making thing. I don’t know about you, but it sure seems like we came full circle in 13 years. And I am at peace.
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