17 days...It has been 17 days since my precious David, my son, went to Heaven. 16 days since I held his sweet lifeless body in my arms. I have reminded myself a thousand times he is not here, he has risen...He is not buried in the cold earth off Mullan Road, three feet under the ground. He is far from here and yet so close to my heart. He is alive, he is alive, he is alive...

I read in my Bible that "God is not the God of the dead but of the living." My son is with the Good Shepherd...but I cannot dwell in those same green pastures just now. I am called to dwell among frozen, snow-covered land, far from home, with no sign of spring in sight. But I know that spring will come...the green and the life will return...but David will not.

There is always a period of time just after someone dies when they still feel so close, like the memory of them lingers so freshly, the newness of their departing is so near, that it is hard to reconcile that the loved one is gone. And then, after about two weeks, you feel the full weight of their passing, the finality of their departure. That is how it is now with David. He's not coming back, but I will go to him one day. He feels completely and totally gone. It is harder to see his tiny face in my mind's eye. It feels like he has been gone so long. Was he ever really mine? He was like a little flower that bloomed out of season whose glory and color and life emerged and was really there, but as quickly as it bloomed, it withered. I can still feel the softness of his skin, his delicate fingers. I wanted to hold those hands--to cradle him--to soothe him when he cried. If only I could have held him while he was still alive, heart beating. I wanted to look into his eyes, just once. But once would never have been enough. I will look forward to the time, with eyes of faith, when I will see him face to face; and the pain and disappointment, and broken dreams and hearts will be no more. There will be no more tears...

But for now, tears come when I think of how much distance I feel between him and me now. In the week after his passing, I could still feel what it was like to carry him inside me. I opened the baby lotion bottle every day for nearly two weeks, so I could remember what he smelled like when I applied lotion to his drying, fragile skin. The hospital room was so dry that I could barely keep my own lips from chapping. Watching death settle over his sensitive, fragile skin made me want to anoint his skin, somehow bring back the moisture, the life that I had been nourishing for nearly 7 months.


Like an artist pouring herself into her most heartfelt piece of art, only to have it go on display and before her very eyes, the rich colors disappear, the forms and lines blur, the beauty disappears before her very eyes. That's the horror I felt as I held David, watching the sad, irreversible effects of death creep over his tiny form. It was an affront to all that is sacred to see death win over my tiny little baby. He is not here...he has risen. He is not trapped in this body any more but is happy and free and whole in Heaven. But I can't see him there. My motherly instincts longed to keep caring for him. But death stopped all natural ability I had to care for David. Handing him over to God was so hard; handing over his tiny body while he looked like he was sleeping, wearing his tiny blue crocheted hat, swaddled in his blue blanket that we picked out with love, and seeing the man from Sunset Gardens carry him off in an infant carrier was my lowest, most heart-wrenching moment as a mother.

Life moves on. There is no physical trace of him now in our lives except for the momentos given to us at the hospital and the photographs we took there. The moving on so plays with my sense of reality. Was it all just a dream? I am in a fog...