Letter to My Son

Letter to My Son

Today, two days before your due date, your father, your sister, and I picked out a rosebush to plant on your grave.

I thought that when this time came – May 5th, Cinco de Mayo: a time of celebration for some and mourning for others — that I would want to be somewhere far from here, far from our home, the place where you’re buried.

But I find comfort in being here. Right now, I stare at the portion of fence beside which I stood that night your father dug your gave, pausing to wipe the moisture from his eyes.

New life has transpired since your death, and I remind myself of this often. If you had not died, your little sister could not have been conceived.

Yet there are moments when I long to hold you both.

I had a dream this week where this longing came true.

Twins, the doctor said, a boy and a girl. But I knew that you were not twins. I touched your hair and looked up at your father and smiled.

“See? They were wrong,” I told him. “He was in there all along.”

That day was hard for me.

There have not been many hard days due to your older sister’s presence, my Balm of Gilead, and to the promise of your little sister who stretches and yawns in my once desolate womb.

But that day, I wept on the couch as I watched your little sister’s limbs ripple beneath my skin.

I wept as I scrubbed the bathtub around your older sister’s toys and turned on the water full force to stifle the sound of my sobs.

But your father heard them – he heard me – and he came and touched my arched back over the bathtub and my yellow gloves, clasped in a wordless prayer.

With fear in his voice, he asked what was wrong.

I told him about you, about the dream of twins; I reminded him of the due date that we will never reach, but he had remembered on his own.

So, this morning, I brushed your older sister’s hair and left the floor unswept.

We drove to the greenhouse in town, and I held your sister’s hand as our family walked through the resplendent maze of hanging baskets, their flowers shaped like bells.

I looked through them all, searching for one worthy of your temporal resting place.

And then I found a rosebush with layered, peach-skin petals as delicate as tissue paper.

It was so beautiful I decided to overlook the fact that it was named after Marilyn Monroe.

I was still standing there, holding your sister’s hand and thinking of your hand that I will never hold, when an elderly woman in a goldenrod sweater came over and touched my arm.

“You’re wealthy,” she said, peering over her glasses at your sister. “If you don’t got one penny in this world, you look down at that little girl right there, and you know how rich you are.”

And I knew this was a sign—even, perhaps, permission—to not keep reaching for your hand all of my life, but, because of your death, to hold on to your siblings’ hands all the more.

To cherish every moment I get to rock them to sleep, to kiss their little fingers and toes while drinking in the sweet rhythm of their breath.

And so I will, my child.

In those ten weeks I carried you, and in the thirty since, you have taught me to not yearn for what cannot be changed, but to embrace every moment I am granted with those I love.

I’ll love you always.

Your mother,