My Dear Sweet William

My dear sweet William...

There aren't words to tell you how much we miss you. I wish we were gearing up for a crazy, hectic one-year-old's party, something that would disrupt your whole routine and make you good and cranky and more than ready for your usual nap. I want that child, the boy turning one who would be taking his first toddling steps toward a lifetime of walking away.

I wanted to be the one to let go first.

I took your memory box down today from the shelf for the first time in six months. I said, the day we knew you were dead - the day you were born - that I didn't want to be that woman, the one who had a cardboard box instead of a baby. But I am that woman, and I have a box instead of a son. I have pictures and a stuffed bear and a blanket. There are drops of your blood on the little outfit you wore and I smelled it, hoping to find any lingering scent of you, but there was none. I left my tears there. Your DNA and mine.

I found the lock of your hair, so dark and fine and beautiful. It's the thing I cherish most, that reminds me, yes, you were here, you were alive inside me, floating in a waiting darkness. You heard my voice, were rocked to sleep by my movements, and felt my love, thick as blood and pouring through that lifeline, the one that failed us both. You were here, and then you were gone.

I can't tell you not to pull the dog's ears or listen to you talking to yourself in that sweet baby-babble in your crib across the hall in the morning. I can't complain that you're growing out of everything so FAST and how running after a little one at forty is a lot more tiring than it is at twenty. I can't give you anything, anymore. I had one shot - that oblivious nine months you spent in my belly - and it's past.

You will forever be my future-child, a projection on the screen of my mind. I don't turn that movie on daily anymore, like I once did. But days like today - your first year! - I imagine you forward, and I probably will do it until I, too, am gone. Your first smile, your first words, your first steps, your first birthday. Your first lost tooth, your first skinned knee, your first day of school, your first heartbreak.Your first date, your first car, your graduation, your wedding. But I know, I will never have those firsts. It's all a mind-movie, a bit of future-projection to help ease my presently aching heart of the heaviness of past regret.

I will never know or have you again. You are just paper and wisps and ash.

But I can still close my eyes and feel you. I held the weight of the world in my arms the day you were born, and you...just barely a five-pound bundle of bittersweet love. Your skin was as soft as flower petals, your mouth a little rosebud. I remember those things. Your spine was perfection - I felt it with my hand, every groove, just like the string of pearls we'd seen on the screen. Your fingers were long and delicate. They were my hands, not your father's. I remember the wet smell of your birth, the doctor asking, "Do you want to see your son?" and reaching my arms out because yes, yes, of course I wanted you, I'd never wanted anything more. I remember rocking you and sobbing and asking you, "What happened, baby? What happened?" As if you could open your eyes and tell me. I remember the blood that ran in a trickle out of your nose that I wiped delicately away with the edge of the blanket like I would have wiped your tears had you been born alive.

And I remember most how much I loved you, how much that feeling consumed me.

It still does.

Today would have been your first birthday, and for me, there's not a lot of "happy" in it. But there is a lot of love. I may not be able to kiss your forehead and wish you happy birthday today, but my love for you knows no bounds. There are no edges to it; there is no end. I know you felt it, when you were inside of me, how loved and wanted you were - and just like I know my love crossed that placenta-barrier and fed you, like the blood in my veins...I know it crosses over to wherever you are now.

I love you, William, today on your first birthday and every day.