We’d gone to the zoo as a family on Mother’s Day. My parents, my two younger brothers walking beside me, and our brand new baby brother Rory, in his pram.
29 days old.
And then he died the next day. Just slipped away silently from SIDS in his little cot, in the room beside my parents.
I watched my father try to revive him. I stood near my brother in his tiny white coffin at his funeral.
Our family was never quite the same after that Mother’s Day.
I usually join in any other festive day on the calendar with gusto. I’ll leave hints and gift ideas artfully round the house. But don’t bother buying me presents on that day. It’s the only festive day where I’m perfectly happy to say that I don’t need ‘stuff.’
I choose to sit this day out.
I know how blessed I am with three delightful, healthy children every day of the year. Except for those odd days where they get sick with some fever or other. Then I sit beside them and gently place cooling flannels on their bodies, while fervently and inwardly muttering ‘please don’t die, please don’t die.’ Not irrational from my perspective at all.
Because I know they might. I’ve seen lightning strike. I know it to be true.
On Mother’s Day I’m thinking of the Mothers whose children aren’t here with them on this day.
I must admit to feeling a sense of impatience with those who complain about the selfishness of their children on this day. Because if they knew their child might slip away the next day, then I’d be pretty certain those complaints would dry up quickly.
I’ll no doubt love the cards my kids make for me.
And I’ll thoroughly enjoy the breakfast they’ll try to make for me.
But mostly I’ll be thinking of my own mother. The person who had to continue living, after her baby died. The mother who had to find a way to mother me and my brothers, amidst her own, gut wrenching grief. It takes a special person to do that and it took her time.
But she survived. We all did.
I’m proud of some of the work I have done to honour my brother’s memory and his short life. I am privileged to have become friends with some extraordinary people as a result.
I have my three kids here with me today, and hopefully for a long time to come.
And that’s more than enough.
Image courtesy We Heart it.
