Twenty Years

Today is my nephew's twentieth birthday. All day I tried to think of what to say that would be appropriate...but I don't think I've ever said it better than this that I wrote when he was sixteen...before I started blogging. So today I'll just change the age and add it here. Lori...I'm sending you a big hug. Wish I were there to deliver it in person.

Twenty years ago yesterday, I became an aunt for the first time. I was ten. Ten years old, with a long list of plans for my time with this baby my sister was about to give birth to. I had a bag packed and by the front door ready to go to the hospital when “the call” came. My bag probably had more junk in it than my sister’s bag did. I always was a packrat.

Mom woke me up at some horribly early hour and I didn’t even brush my hair…I just threw on a pink and white shirt and a denim skirt and grabbed the keep-me-entertained-for-a-trip-around-the-world bag on my way out the door. And off to the hospital we went. I sat in the waiting room with the others and continued my mental list making. I’d get to babysit and get to play junior mom. This would be like having the little brother or sister I’d always wanted but never had.

But even the best laid plans don’t always happen the way we dream them. They didn’t that day. There were no shouts of “It’s a girl!” or “It’s a boy!” There was just a very sad doctor’s face. How do you even tell a man who just left his wife and unborn child in your safe care that you took care of her, but about the baby…there was just nothing you could do? But he had to somehow figure out how to say that to my brother-in-law, and to the rest of the very shocked family members gathered around. How does a husband go explain to his wife that yes, when she went under the anesthetic…yes the baby was fine, but now…there won’t be a baby to take home and dress up and play with? How does a wife go to sleep knowing her baby is okay and wake up to find out her baby has died? And she never even got to meet him?

How does a ten year old grasp a sentence like “We lost the baby”? I was ready to pack up my bag and go find him. It was time to rethink all those plans I’d been making…but I couldn’t make enough sense of the situation to do that. That whole week was full of trying to make sense of situations that just didn’t. How do I explain to my friends at school that the baby came…but there is no baby? How do I sit through a funeral and listen to people sing about being near to the heart of God when I want that baby to be here…near to my heart?

Well, somehow I did it. Somehow we all did it…just like all of us do all the hard things that we have to do when they happen. I’m not ten anymore. I understand that babies die…children die…adults die…and not always at the “right” time. That there really never is a “right” time to die in the eyes of those who are left to sort out the questions and the emotions. But even at 30, I don’t understand why it had to be him. Why right now I can’t pop online and have both a nephew and a niece on my instant messenger list. Why I couldn’t make two trips to Kansas for eighth-grade graduations and then high school graduations. Why I didn’t have to learn about football and sports cars and guitars besides makeup and volleyball and lists of cute boys.

Kirk…I miss you. If I’d had it my way, you’d be here. I might be lecturing you about a speeding ticket or hinting to you to buy roses for your girlfriend because she’d like that. I might be trying to convince you to come to college where I work so I could see you more. I’d have saved a place for you in the groomsman line for when I get married. But I can’t do any of those things. Well…except miss you. Which I do. I can’t believe you’d be twenty. Way to make me feel old, Kiddo. So I know that you’re in Heaven and I know that you’d be nuts to rather be here than there…so I won’t wish you back too often. But I just hope that you can know that you are still loved. Always loved. I only got to hold you one time…and I know that at twenty it wouldn’t even be cool to, you know, do the whole hugging thing…but someday I hope I get to hold you one more time and tell you things that I should have told you that day, but I was only ten and it was early in the morning and I kind of didn’t know I’d regret that later, so I just stood there instead of saying anything. So I’m saying them now. On your birthday, I just want to say thanks for making me an aunt…and thanks for teaching me that it’s okay to not understand and to ask questions. I’m waiting for the day when I can see you again.

-- Aunt Bekah