Happy Birthday

Today is my oldest son's birthday. He would have been 19 today. I am incredibly sentimental and nostalgic about birthdays on a good day. This is, to no body's surprise, not any easier now. I was trying to think how I could write about my plethora of memories, the flooding of glimpses of years of birthday parties, the idea of maybe expressing how I was only a child thinking I knew a lot more than I did, getting ready to be a parent for the first time, not having any idea what was ahead. But in all of the recollections and thoughts that came about in the past few days, the following article that I kept in a draft status kept creeping back in to my mind.

The idea came to me on the 9 month mark of my son's passing. It struck me to the core. I remember sitting there for over an hour in the realization of the simplicity of the idea.

God gives you 9 months to carry a child for a reason. Your body changes, your instincts change, your priorities change, your mind changes, your overall outlook changes.  Preparing for life to begin. You try to prepare, You read books, you talk to people who are parents, who are expecting also, you talk to health care professionals, you prepare yourself for all the ways your life is about to change. And then at that moment when you see your child for the first time, you realize how unprepared you are. How woefully unprepared. How very little you know. You knew your life was about to change, but you didn't know how much. You are no longer the person you were, and will never be again.
I realized at the 9 month anniversary of my son's death, that these 9 months were so similar. My body changed, my priorities changed, my instincts changed, my mind changed. I talked to health care professionals, I talked to people who had lost a child, I talked to friends and loved ones, I tried to prepare myself for how my life was forever changed. It took my body 9 months to realize the extent of the damage, if you will. And I am still woefully unprepared. But I think it was not a mistake that this struck me on this particular date. 9 months is the time it takes for your body and mind to connect and realize that life is going to be totally different for you, even if it doesn't understand how much. It is the beginning of a new era. Whether you wanted it to come or not.