Every Single Second
It has been a terrible, horrible,
no good, very bad day.
My mom says some days are like that.
--Judith Viorst
Every single second of every minute of every hour of every day of my life from this day forward will be different than it should have been.
When I opened my eyes the next morning, that was the first thought I had. Next, I thought of my sons – my sweet, innocent boys. I had to tell them the seemingly impossible fact. The fact that would change every single second of every minute of every hour of every day of their lives from that day forward as well. I wanted to stay in bed all day. I wanted to pretend that the nightmare that was the day before was just that. I wanted to pull the covers over my head and hide away in a room as dark as my heart was hollow.
But I couldn’t do any of those things because I had heard the pitter-patter of Luke’s feet running from his bedroom to mine. I heard Zack and Jake’s voices as they made their way down the stairs. I knew I had to pull myself together. I had to tell them what had happened without completely falling apart. I had to make sure I had the presence of mind to answer their questions, to allow them to have whatever reactions they each needed to have, and to provide them with love and comfort as I shattered the innocence of their worlds.
I thought my husband Jeremy and I would tell the boys together, but as I asked the kids to sit with me on the couch, telling them I needed to talk to them about something, Jeremy didn’t move from his place in the kitchen. He simply couldn’t bring himself to do it. Had I called for him, I’m sure Jeremy would have come to sit with us, but when I looked over and saw him bracing himself on the kitchen counter, it was clear he was using all his energy to keep his body upright and to stifle the sobs desperate to pour out of him. I knew I couldn’t put him through it.
The boys all sat close to me. I said, “Baby Reed got an infection, a boo-boo, in his belly yesterday. The doctors did everything they could to try to fix him, and Reed tried really hard to stay here with us, but he was just too little. His body couldn’t get better. He died. That means he is gone. He is in heaven now. He is not coming home. He will never come home to us.”
I explained that Jeremy and I were sad about Reed and that we missed him, that they might see us cry sometimes, but that crying is okay, and it is okay if they cry and feel sad sometimes too. Crying just means that we love their baby brother and miss him. I gave them each a stuffed animal from Reed and showed them the box of his things from the hospital.
At six, five, and two, they all had different emotional responses and different levels of understanding. Zack immediately cried, expressing how upset he was that he never got to meet Reed in-person. He was happy to have “Reed the Bear.” He tied a swaddle blanket around the stuffed bear’s neck like a cape, tied two of Reed’s crocheted hats around its feet as booties, and added a blue and white sparkly angel pin to the bear’s ear.
Jake was very quiet and reserved, nuzzling close to me, but not wanting to talk about Reed or what had happened.
Luke kept repeating the things I said – his way of processing the information, “My baby died. My baby dead. Baby Reed not coming home. Baby Reed belly hurt. Doctors no help. Baby Reed died. My baby not coming home. My baby never come home. You sad Mommy? You cry Mommy? Daddy sad? Daddy cry? Me sad. Me cry. Baby Reed died.” Hearing a two-year-old say those words added a level of heartache for which I was not prepared.
Only an hour after telling the boys, my phone rang. It was my mom. She said that after she and my dad had left us at the hospital the night before, they got a call saying they should go to my grandma’s assisted living facility right away. My parents and my sister were with my grandma when she took her last breath, only hours after Reed’s heart had stopped beating. Reed was on this earth for thirty days, and my grandma for more than 101 years, but both had left a lasting impact on our family.
For the second time on that same awful day, I sat the boys on the couch – this time to tell them Great-Grandma had died. Minutes later, my boys, who had been innocent and entirely untouched by death only hours before, had been told that two people close to them had died: one whom they had never met, but thought they would share their lives with, and one whom, prior to the pandemic, they had looked forward to seeing every week; one whose life had only just begun and one who had lived significantly longer than anyone else they had ever known.
It was easy to answer the boys’ “why” when it came to Great-Grandma. Her death followed the natural order of things. She was old. She had lived a long, happy life. I’m not sure I’m ever going to be able to answer the “why” of Reed’s death. It has been twenty-eight years since my brother Frankie died from a brain tumor at the age of five and I still haven’t been able to figure out the “why” of Frankie’s death. The only things I can say to the boys are those I can say with honesty: “Sometimes in life, bad things just happen. We can’t always make sense of those bad things. There is no reason. The only thing I can promise is that you will always be loved. No matter what. You will be loved through the good and through the bad.”
Two days later, Jake sat smiling at the head of the kitchen table in front of his Ryan’s World cake lit with five candles. We sang Jake the birthday song with as much enthusiasm as we could muster. It had been three days since Reed had died on Jake’s fifth birthday (an added cruelty), and we decided to go through with the party we had promised him. It was just us, our parents, and my sister’s family, but this little gathering was hard enough.
I managed to clean the house, make homemade macaroni, pick up the cake, which was ordered “Before,” get balloons from the Dollar Tree, and purchase Super Mario decorations, a piñata, and the fried chicken that Jake had requested for his birthday meal. We forced smiles as we watched Jake blow out his candles, open his presents, and swing with all his might at the piñata, but I know he noticed when my mom stood in the corner of the living room looking at the pictures we had printed and framed of Reed; when Jeremy made his “sour cry face,” as Zack called it, and ducked into the bedroom for a few minutes to compose himself; and when I hugged Jake a little longer and a little tighter than usual, wiping my eyes when we separated.
After the party was over, after the boys were tucked in their beds, and after having a long cry in the shower, I collapsed into bed. I laid my head on Jeremy’s shoulder, looked up at him, and said, “January 13th cannot be a bad day for us every year. January 13th has to be about Jake’s birth and his life and not about Reed’s death.”
I’m not sure how we’re going to do it, how we’re going to force our minds not to relive the last day of Reed’s life on Jake’s birthday every year, but I don’t want Jake to look back and think of his birthday as being anything other than happy. Only after the candles have been blown out, the presents are opened, and Jake is sleeping happily in his bed, will I allow myself to fall apart, to be sad about the other little boy who should be celebrating with us.
When I closed my eyes on the night of the party, even though I knew that every second of every minute of every hour of every day of my life would be different than it should have been, I thought of Zack, Jake, and Luke, and I knew that those seconds and minutes and hours and days – at least some of them – could still contain joy, could still contain meaning, could still add up to a life worth living. They had to. They have to. They will.
Diana Robinson is a labor and employment attorney in Toledo, Ohio. She is also a wife and the mother to four sons: three she is lucky enough to parent earth-side and one who will live forever in her heart. She is currently working on a memoir detailing her experience with infertility, infant loss, and mothering through grief.