Imaginary Friend or Something Else?

Our youngest daughter, born a year and a little over a month after Eli has begun to talk about Eli.  In fact, she's quite fixated on him in a way.  So much so that I made her a little photo album of him which she cherishes.  But it's more than that.  She talks about Eli a lot.  When he was a baby and how she held him.  She talks about little fights they've had while playing or what kind of things they've been playing together.  He talks to her and she will tell me what he says.  It's always her voice that comes through but nonetheless it makes me wonder.  Does she have a connection to Eli?  Is this an imaginary friend?

It is bittersweet to hear his name so often.  I love to hear it and it is nice to think that he may be nearby, visiting every now and then, taking care of the little sister he never knew.  I don't know.

This year Dia de los Muertos really spoke to me.  I dug into it a little deeper and found out that November 1st is often considered the Day of the Innocents and it is on that day that spirits of children and babies visit their loved ones.  I baked my little ones the Pan de Muertos and miraculously we still have marigolds in our yard so I hope that yesterday at some point the breath of the wind may have been sweet little kisses blowing in the breeze.  Maybe just maybe they were drawn to us for that one day because lately I have been missing them both so much.

Lenten Observance

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday or the beginning of the Lenten period in the Catholic Church.  Yesterday marks the one month countdown to Eli's second birthday.  Sunday was weekly mass.  Sunday I found myself thinking about one month from yesterday (Eli's birthday) and how appropriate it is to me that his birthday falls during Lent.  Lent to me is a heavy time.  For me, it is a time to prepare for Jesus' death and as a mother who has experienced two of her own sons' deaths I can really relate to the time and to Mary's loss as Jesus' mother.  Now, more than ever, I feel that heaviness in my heart and my bones.  And apparently I will for at least the next five years.  You see, I looked at the calendars through 2018 and Eli's birthday during each of those years, and likely for all of the following years, will always fall during Lent.

Giving up chocolate or other sweets, even television, seems so silly in light of what I gave up just two years ago.  Lent has now become an acute observance of mourning for me and there is no earthly deprivation that could hold a candle to the deprivation of my sons that I live with every day.  I would live that one day of Eli's life just one day every year if I could.

Good Friday

My Sunday School class and I have been discussing the Easter season and how Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday and then we celebrate his resurrection on Easter Sunday.  The children were very interested in talking about these days and what happened and through the course of our discussions they asked me a very good question to which I did not have the answer, "Why do we call it Good Friday when it's the day Jesus died?"  I believe in honesty and honestly I did not know that answer at the time so my  response was that I didn't know but I believed it was a very sad day because Jesus died and died so painfully.

I happened to get an answer to this question which makes sense:  Jesus' suffering and dying for all of mankind imparted the greatest gift of love and the opportunity for repentance and salvation.  It is a reminder that to find happiness we must first go through sorrow.  That goodness can emerge from suffering and even death.  I can see that and I believe to an extent, I have lived it.  I have suffered through the death of two sons, neither by choice, but both loved greatly.  I have watched them die and seen what happens in the after.  There is great opportunity to for good to emerge from such dark times.  Unlike God, I do not get to resurrect my beloved children and have them live at my side for eternity, my three days last an earthly lifetime but I live it knowing that one day when this life ends another will begin for me and my precious boys.

Righting the Wrongs

This morning I finished reading "When Bad Things Happen to Good People".  There was  no "aha" moment for me today but had I read that book two or  more years ago there would have been.  Pretty much everything that I read was consistent with my own redefinition of my Catholic upbringing and beliefs.  Something which I have struggled to redefine since Wyatt's Potter's diagnosis in January of 2003.

I have righted the wrongs that were installed by my church and family over the course of my childhood and young adulthood.  The wrongs:  be good and bad things will not happen to you, if they do then you must have done something to deserve them, God has a plan and everything has a purpose, if you pray God will answer your prayers.  The righting:   good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people because God does not control  every aspect of the universe, sometimes because we as humans were given free will  by God and because as humans we often pray for impossible things.  I am not a great person,  but I lead a mostly good life.  There is not one thing which I have done which merits the suffering  I have endured over the last nine years of my life.  I accept that Potter's Syndrome is just one thing completely out of God's control but not out of his concerns.  I felt Him with me every step of the way through Eli's pregnancy and after.  I know it pained God to watch our suffering and probably even more so to welcome our sweet little boy to join his brother.  I also know that he manifests his love for us by empowering geneticists, scientists and doctors to study Potter's Syndrome and I have confidence that one day there will be answers.

I wish that I had understood these things when I was pregnant with Wyatt.  That my religious background could have comforted and supported me rather than giving me more unrealistic expectations than I could count.  I believed prayer, and lots of it, would heal my son.  That my unwavering faith would deliver me from having to watch my baby die.  His death not only shattered my heart, it shattered my religious foundation.  Faith is so easy to have when it needn't be explained.  I needed a reason for Wyatt's death, I needed a way to justify the pain that was tearing me apart, to make it all seem worthwhile.  So I turned to God and then I turned away.  What else could I do after believing all those wrongs for so many years?  How could I believe that it was somehow my fault, that I deserved to carry a child with a fatal birth defect and that I deserved to watch him die and that I would be left to live without him for the rest of my life?  How could I believe that my prayers were not good enough when I had prayed so hard and they were completely heartfelt?  How could I justify this outcome when all around me I saw others who had done worse yet were given completely healthy children, even ones that were unwanted?  How could I still believe in a loving and compassionate God when I was told that my son's death was part of this God's plan?  How could my completely innocent child be chosen by this God to suffer so much?  I sought answers for a long long time to these questions but none fit.  I was only left angry, bitter and feeling abandoned by the one who was supposed to love me the mostl.

Finally I stopped asking those questions, I stopped seeking (and listening to) explanations.  I went back to the simplest of explanations, one worthy of my kindergarten faith class:  bad things will happen and when they do God is with you, when you hurt he hurts and he will love you through it all.  Expectations only bring disappointment, love breeds love and there is one love greater than all.