Six months

Dearest Sidney,

I miss you.  I cannot believe it’s been six months since I gave birth to you.  You were perfect to me then, and you are perfect to me now, except that you are not here in my arms. I love you unconditionally.  Yesterday, your daddy and I went and ordered your tombstone.  We put a tree of life on it, and it will have your full name, your birth date, and then it will say, ‘Beloved son and brother, always and forever.’ Your daddy tells Eli that he loves him always and forever, and whenever I visit you in the cemetery, I tell you I love you always and forever, and so we wanted that message to be written clearly across the stone that marks your grave.

I spent my birthday without you.  It was a sad day for me.  In the evening, I opened some presents from Eli and daddy.  One of them had a picture of a necklace that daddy is getting for me.  It is a locket with a tree on it.  It hasn’t come but once it comes, I want to engrave the line from the E.E. Cummings poem on the back, “I carry your heart.  I carry it in my heart.’ And then I want to put your picture inside so that I always have a physical reminder of you close to me.  You are so beautiful to me.  I ache to kiss your soft cheeks again, to hold you tightly in my arms.  You cannot know how much I long for you.  I still somehow cannot grasp how the world can go on without you here in it.

To mark six months without you, we will donate a small amount of money to a children’s organization in your name.  Something positive that comes from you having existed.  It is not a lot, but it is something.

Tonight, we will have shabbat dinner at friends’, and I will feel your absence.  I always feel your absence.  I am always aware that something is not as it should be.  Time may go on, but my longing and love for you will never change.

Please know how much you mean to me.  Please know how much I love you.  Please know how much I miss you.  And please know that you will always be a part of this family, my dear second son.

I love you always and forever.

Love,

your mama