A Letter to My Mother

Mom and Jack

Me, Mom, and Charlie

My mother just left after a wonderful visit.  As I watched her with my boys, I wondered if being with them made her think of my brother....

When I was little, I thought a lot about my brother who passed away.  He was 3 months old when he died from SIDS.  I am not sure why I thought about him so often, but I did.  He would have been 14 months older than me.  Maybe that is why.  I felt a bond with him, even though I never met him.  But I talked to him and prayed to God to watch over him.  I would think about what it would have been like if he was alive.  I liked to think that we would have been best buds and that I would have followed him around everywhere.

As I have mentioned before, when something makes me sad or scares me, I roll it around in my head until I figure it out.  Until I figured out why my stomach is going and how to make it stop.  My 11-year-old self knew enough that having your baby die was bad.  But that 11-year-old couldn't comprehend the depth of that pain.  I couldn't articulate what I was trying to figure out.  So I internalized it and "figured" that when a baby is that little, you didn't have enough time to bond and love it so maybe it wouldn't hurt that bad.  I significantly remember being in my bedroom and coming up with this.  That is what my little brain came up with so I wouldn't have to think about my parents and big sisters in pain. That scared me and kept me up at night so my defense mechanism kicked in and came up with something that made sense to me at the time.

Fast forward to the birth of my son.  Oh, how that 11-year-old Dawn was wrong.  The love I felt for that little guy the moment I saw him was bigger than I could have imagined.  The weeks that followed were filled with happiness and love, but also tons of worry.  Was he breathing?  Was he growing?  Was he okay?  I remember being in my kitchen and realizing that he was 3 months old.  The age my brother died.  And I just broke down and cried.  I loved that boy beyond measure and our bond was strong after only three months.  How did my mother get over losing her baby boy?  How did she not wake up every morning aching to hold that sweet boy?  How did she not break down when she thought of his face and his adorable laughter?

I don't know how she kept going, but she did.  She had my 2 older sisters to take care of and, 2 months later, I was starting to grow in her stomach.  I have never asked my mother about that time.  I have talked to my older sister.  She said she still remembers the sound my mother made when she went in to wake up my brother from his nap and found him.  I cannot even imagine.  When talking about this with friends, I cannot even finish the sentence "And she went in to wake him up...." without crying.  And crying hard.  How do you get past that?

As I have gotten older, I think about that and I realize that how I had "figured" it out in my head was wrong. So-far-from-the-truth wrong.

Despite that horrible loss, my mother kept going.  She was silly with us.  She let us do her hair and makeup.  She let us use pens on her and draw on every inch of her body.  She had 2 more babies.  She gave each of us 4 girls great Christmases.  One of my favorite memories growing up was cuddling with my mother.  It always seemed to be just me and her.  Maybe my sisters were with us, but all I remember is my mother's soft hand rubbing my cheek.  My point is that she gave us all extra love and attention. She gave us a wonderful childhood.  Who wouldn't have blamed her for only doing what she had to do to take care of us? No one. But she chose to keep going.  And keep going positively.

You hear stories about people who are never the same.  They stop living and laughing and loving.  I can understand that now.  Losing someone you love is horrible.  Losing a baby is doubly horrible.

          So, thank you, Mom, for getting up every day even though you must have wanted to stay under the covers and hide.  Thank you for filling my childhood with laughter and fun.  Thank you for never once turning your hurt on us.  Thank you for raising your head and showing us that life goes on.  Thank you for doing things with us that I now do with my sons because they were so great.  Thank you for fighting the feelings and memories that had to be there every day and choosing to love on us instead of succumbing to the hurt. I love you.

Now that I am a mother, I do understand.  This 41-year-old can imagine the awfulness that follows the death of a child.  I can imagine what it took to keep going every day.  I can imagine that the pain never goes away.  That pain becomes who you are.  You wake up and it takes your breath away when you remember.  That doesn't ever go away.  But you have a choice: stop living or grow from the experience.  My mother chose the latter.

So although my 11-year-old self couldn't articulate what I was feeling, I hope this 41-year-old has...