Tonight is Ted’s monthly board member meeting at our local golf course. We met at home after work, fixed a quick dinner and I was left with an empty house before the sun fell.
I pulled out yoga mat and decided tonight was as good of night as any to practice in the middle of my kitchen floor. Especially since Ted wasn’t home and curious why I was doing another strange thing.
At the beginning of my practice the instructor had us looking into our hands, palms facing up. She said, “look into our hands and all that we may have held along this journey.” My thoughts immediately drifted to Sam.
Earlier this month our work phone rang and I answered to a tearful woman filled with questions about her boyfriend who was incarcerated at the time. Through her questions she told me that the night before her baby died at 38 weeks. Immediately, I wanted to tell her I loved her; that I loved her baby. I wanted to tell her that I know how her heart aches and tell her that it will for a long time; maybe forever. Most of all, I wanted to know her baby’s name. I wanted to say it to her so she’d know that he or she would forever be on my heart.
But I couldn’t.
I was at work and I didn’t want to impose myself on a new Mama Sister who had so many decisions to be making in her first few days of her loss journey. Instead as the conversation ended, all I could choke out was, “I’m so sorry about your baby.” as she cried and thanked me and hung up the phone.
Yesterday I was reporting in the courtroom when a Defendant appeared in Court. In tears, he shared with the Judge that his baby had just died and that he felt lost. I felt the same need to tell him I loved him, but couldn’t. I looked him up on Facebook and found his girlfriend, the one I’d talked to a few weeks ago on the phone, and stared.
Her Facebook profile photo contained stamped handprints of their baby and the same memory box we’d been given. Next to it was a tiny bag of clothes, donated in memory of Sam.
I didn’t have to tell them that I loved them, or their baby boy.
They already knew.
They found out I loved them on the day their baby was born, when he was wrapped in soft clothes and blankets so lovingly donated by Sam’s family and friends on his first birthday. They might never know who I am, but it doesn’t matter; they know Sam.
I’ve spent almost two years delving into grief after one stillbirth and one miscarriage. I’d like to think that they lived for moments just like these.
As I stared into my hands this evening and thought about all that I have held along my journey, Sam is by far the greatest.
For Colby.
Thinking of Sam 