Over nineteen years ago, I held my first baby in my hands. It was the end of July, hot and muggy. Hope popped like a bubble. It became her middle name. Somehow her little brother Gabriel survived my tempestuous womb, even when I bled at nine weeks. Before I know it he himself will be nineteen years old. Time flies.
While Gabriel toddled around, we lost baby after baby – more sisters, and brothers. He helped me survive the darkest moments, his freckled nose and pillowy cheeks turned up at me, his dimpled hand holding mine or brushing my hair away or offering me his cream colored favorite blankie. When I cried, he cried too. I distinctly remembering him asking once after an ultrasound, “did God say yes this time?” and I had to tell him again, “I don’t understand why, but God said again, no not yet.” Time stood still.
Finally we did have more living children, after countless doctors took on our case and we tried multiple medical interventions. We traveled to Mexico for things not approved in the States. We signed up for a study on a new usage of a medication. I did three injections and a half-cup of pills every day. There was nothing successful but the Lord’s command, let there be life. He worked through physical means, and we sought His wisdom and direction every month of the journey. Time crawled.
Five living children. Nine children in heaven. I know all fourteen of their names. There was probably another, a twin – I call him Asaph. He’s the only one I never really saw with my own eyes, so I can’t count him without proof. I remember the test days, the ultrasound days, the loss days, the birthdays, the October 15th days, the d&c days. Time piles up like snowdrifts.
There were years where October 15th was a necessary part of my grieving journey. Balloons sent up into the sky, candles lit in the house as part of a wave of light, wearing pink and blue in memory of all the darlings we could not hold. It was like paying dues for the membership in a club I did not want to be in. Weeks, months, years passed as though time were racing against the clock.
Now I sit here in an empty house. Four kids at the rugby field with my husband. Nine in heaven with their Father. One living on his own, so he no longer calls my home his. And the grief of an old mother is reminiscent of the young’s. The letting go. The trusting of the sovereign God. The acknowledgement that none of my fourteen children ultimately belongs to me nor do their fates. But my desperate allegiance toward each of my children is the thing every one of my darlings has in common. While I trust them to our Father and let them go to whatever destiny He calls them to, whether they were eighteen days old or eighteen years old, my love for them is timeless.
I think of every one of my children every day of my life. I wonder what the one is doing while I work hard to keep up with the four while I ponder in passing moments about the nine. How will the grief continue to change and ebb and assimilate into my being over the next nineteen years? Time will tell.
My youngest two still want me to tuck them in at night, read with them, pray over them and sing them a blessing. Often I rush through it, over-scheduled with other responsibilities and over-tired from the wearying days. And then it hits me. There are babies I never got to tuck into bed at night, and how I wish I could have. And there are grown children who no longer want mama at the bedside, who don’t need the mothering of their earlier years. And there’s a young adult somewhere living his own life, making his own bed and saying his own prayers. The conglomeration reminds me that time is of the essence.
Tuck them in when you can. Send the balloons up while it matters. The clock keeps ticking and time marches on.