Bits for Sunday, September 20, 2009

**Today's post goes along with the two below it. **

This past Friday marked 21 years since my nephew was stillborn. I always remember him…remember that day…on his birthday, but this year I wanted to do something extra special because it was a big year. One of my friends designs and etches monuments, so I asked her to make a “little something” for his grave. I asked her to use the words This is what it means to be held from Natalie Grant’s song, and she did a beautiful job on a little granite heart.

So after work Friday evening, I packed up the car with my journal, my scrapbook, the little heart, my camera (of course) and a beach towel (yes, you read that right) and I drove to the cemetery. I didn’t really care who might see a girl on a beach towel and wonder if she’d lost her mind…I just wanted to go spend some time remembering.

I won’t spill everything I wrote to him, but here are some parts of it:

Hey Buddy. I think I would have called you Buddy. I can’t believe You have been gone 21 years. Or maybe I just can’t believe how much I still remember every second of that day.

This day is beautiful. The sun is out and it’s warm, and I can hear crickets. The day you died wasn’t like this one…damp and chilly.

I remember sitting in that waiting room, giddy with the excitement of meeting you for the first time – not even knowing that in those very moments, you were meeting Jesus for the first time.

And a little while later they came in and told us they “lost” you. I didn’t understand that. How could they LOSE you? You were a baby, not a set of keys.

And then I knew. And I knew I should cry, but I couldn’t. I tried so hard, but I couldn’t do it. Boy what a switch from today. Today I couldn’t stop. Today I just kept remembering the moment I held you. I just stared at you. No idea what to think. You were big baby – at least an armful for a ten year old aunt.

I remember your funeral and how my face never stopped looking leprous because of all the crying – because by that time I really did understand what had happened.

We sang… “hold us who wait before Thee…near to the heart of God.”

A few years ago, someone else wrote a song about being held… “This is what it means to be held…how it feels when the sacred is torn from your life…and you survive…This is what it is to be loved…and to know that the promise was when everything fell..we’d be held.”

I think of you every time and I cry because it’s true. This is what it means to be held.

I had that phrase engraved and I’m leaving it here today. Because you are held – every day – by the same One Who holds me. You just see Him more clearly.

I miss you, Buddy. I would have loved life with you in it.

The first time I came out here, I tugged on Mom’s skirt because I was confused and I needed answers. The funeral guy told me to leave her alone. Now I’m here alone – still confused – but no one to ask, and no one to tell me to stop.

You should know that I’m quirky. I wore a pink shirt and jeans tonight to come here, because I was wearing pink on my shirt and a denim skirt when I first held you that day. Yes, this quirky charm of mine would have either amused or annoyed you – but I thought you should know.

I am talking in circles and I should probably go. I’ve watched way too much CSI and SVU (everything in my life is an acronym) and being alone in a cemetery is starting to get the best of me.

Anyway, Buddy, I miss you. I miss you, I love you, and I want you to know you are never ever forgotten. Not for a second.

Thanks for making me an aunt. You still hold that record, you know. I miss you, but I’m glad to know you’re safely held.

21...Part Two

It was important to me to go visit Kirk's grave tonight. I wanted to spend some time at the cemetery just journaling and remembering.

The sun was beating right down on his grave when I got there...so I spread out my beach towel and went to work writing him a letter. And yes, I realize I am probably the only person to take a beach towel to a cemetery.

I was a mess today. Cried on and off all day at work (not that this should shock anyone in my office). I admit I became a little irritated with people wanting to haggle over a few dollars when I (still) felt like my world was crashing in. It felt good to be able to just sit and write - uninterrupted.

A special thanks to Alminnie - the mysterious woman next to Kirk who died 106 years ago. i borrowed her tombstone for a camera tripod. :)


Kirk's whole name is Geoffrey Kirk. A woman at my church told me a few weeks ago that she still remembered her son coming home from college for Geoffrey's funeral. Since, when spoken, Geoffrey sounds remarkably like Jeffrey, I was very confused. My brother-in-law had a funeral? How did I miss that? Ahhhh....GEOFFREY! Got it.

Not only did I take a beach towel, I used it! I took along my scrapbook of Kirk to look at while I was there.

I wanted something extra special to take to his grave this year. I didn't want anything that would rot or deflate or blow away....

...so my friend Amber (Hershey traveling buddy?) etched this for me. It's a granite heart and the words are from Natalie Grant's song Held. It looked perfect on his grave. Thanks, Amber, for doing such a wonderful job.

21 years

No one makes a sound in the surgical waiting room. The sun hasn't come up yet, and I am squirming on the couch. No one in my family is talking.

I don't understand.

We came here because my sister is having a baby. That's a happy reason, right? So why is everybody just sitting and staring?...

...A man is walking in now. He doesn't look happy. Maybe he's tired....

..."Lori's fine, but we lost the baby...."


...Who is this man? What does he mean, "Lost the baby?" How can you lose a baby?...

...No! I understand now!

No! They lost the baby! The baby died.

NO, NO, NO!

The man is leaving. Where is he going? He can't just come in here, tell us our baby died, and leave. Come back here!...

21 years doesn't make it hurt any less. I miss him. I so often wonder what it would have been like to have known him. To be calling him on his birthday instead of ordering something to leave at his grave.

And yet, through every tear, I know those words are true: This is what it means to be held.

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

Kirk

Today is my nephew's birthday. I think I've blogged about him before, but I couldn't find the post where I thought I would...so I'm not sure.

I was ten when Kirk was born, and I was so excited to have a baby in the family (since I never could convince Mom and Dad to give me a younger sibling!). But at 5:30 in the morning on Sunday, September 18, 1988, our little family gathered in the waiting room at the hospital and heard words that no family ever wants to hear - the baby was gone.

We don't know why God chose to take Kirk to Heaven, but we know that's exactly where he is.

One week after her baby died, my sister sat at the front of the sanctuary where Jeff was the pastor and she talked to all the kids in the church. She wanted to make sure they knew what had happened and that it was okay to be sad or to have questions. She said to them words that still have great meaning to me today as a non-kid:

"I know it's hard for us to understand, and it's probably even harder for all of you to understand what happened. Because I can't explain why it happened. Nobody knows that. I don't understand why we couldn't keep him here and play with him like the other babies. But I want you to know that it's okay to not understand, and it's okay to be sad about it, and it's okay to cry, and it's okay to ask us questions. 'Cause we're really proud of our little boy.

"I want you to remember that Kirk is in Heaven and that Jesus is taking care of him. Someday all of us are going to see him there."

Sorry about the picture quality here - they're scans of a copy of copy...

The only time I held my nephew.

Dad and me watching my other sister hold baby Kirk.

Kirk -
[Nineteen] years ago, I held you for the first and last time. But I have never stopped missing you and wondering what life would have been like had you been able to stay.

I can't wish you back. But I can miss you lots. I'm proud to be your aunt, and I'm thankful you were one of God's special works of art - if even for just such a brief time.

Even though you'd be all grown up now,
You're still my baby boy.
My best nephew.
And I love you.

- Aunt Bekah

(from the end of his scrapbook that I put together last year on his 18th birthday.)