Flesh and Bone

Kind of an odd title for a post, I know. A lot of thoughts have been brewing lately. I know the holidays had a lot to do with it. I floated into the holidays expecting sunshine and roses (after all, we have Davey, right?) and got hit with the grief a little harder than expected.

My birthday is Sunday and I still have the vague sense of not wanting to celebrate. I just wish both my children were with me, and instead every single celebration has a gaping hole, whether I acknowledge it or not.

People kept telling me all Christmas day, "Just wait until NEXT Christmas! Davey will be SO FUN next year!"  All I could think was that meant that this Christmas was supposed to be the Christmas that Georgie was so fun.

Lately I'm really loving rocking my son to sleep. We are in that transition phase where Dave is starting to put him to bed sometimes, but I still have the magic touch when putting him to bed. And those moments are the favorite part of my day, when my son's warm, soft little body is just turned to me and he looks at me in the dark while drifting to sleep. In those moments, there is just nothing but the two of us, and I forget all my worries and minor stresses that plague my mind more than they should. And I marvel that in all my grief, panic and sorrow, my husband and I somehow made this beautiful little human out of our love for each other and the small shred of hope that we clung to desperately. I just marvel at this weight in my arms, this heavy dream of mine, now real and with me.

I love to rock him. It's so quiet, and I just hear my son breathing, slower and deeper as he settles in. I know that his favorite place is mommy's arms. Many nights it all overwhelms me, and the tears fall silently in the dark, as I feel closer to his sister in those moments than all the rest of the time.

There are a lot of parents who have given me a lot of unwanted advice on the rocking, telling me that he'll get too used to it and won't be able to go to sleep on his own. I know that these are parents who have not lost a child, and I suspect that those mothers who are not able to hold all their children may think differently about this.

I will rock him whenever I want because it is a great privilege I've been given. I will rock him until he no longer lets me. These are things I will hold in my heart when he is old enough to rock his own children.