Cloud Boy

Up in the clouds live the cloud children.  They play all day with the wind and the rain.  They go swimming when it rains and paint pictures with the rainbow colors afterwards.  Father Sun and Mother Moon take care of them.  One day, all the cloud children were playing ball, when the ball rolled right through a hole in the clouds and fell down below.  There was one little boy named Noah who ran off to c+hase it.  When he saw it fall through the clouds, he knealt down besides the hole it fell through and looked.  He saw something he had never seen before.

What Noah saw was a beautiful land with mountains, trees, rivers, and oceans.  He saw animals of all kinds and he saw people.  He thought it was the most beautiful place he had ever seen.
Everyday he returned to that hole in the clouds to watch what was happening on this beautiful land for he wanted to go there.

One day as he was watching he saw four people.  He saw a mother with brown hair that everyone called Tracy or sometimes they called her Teacher Tracy for she had lots of little children around her.
He saw a father named Josh, and two little boys, one older one named Elijah and one littler one named Jonah.  He saw them hiking, playing in the river, and mostly he saw them playing with balls too just like Noah loved to do.  Noah wanted to go and play with them so badly.

So that very evening, Noah went to Father Sun and Mother Moon and told him that he wanted to go down to the beautiful land and be with this family.  The Sun and Moon were not surprised for there had been many cloud children who had wished that before and had indeed left the clouds to live on this land that the Sun and Moon called Earth.

Mother Moon explained to Noah that to travel to the land called Earth, he would get there through a dark wet place inside his new mother Tracy where he would grow a new body.  After that he would travel through a rainbow bridge to the bright land of Earth where his family would welcome him with lots of love.

Noah was very excited and he immediately said yes and began his journey.   When he got inside of Tracy he grew slowly and as his new body was growing he noticed that some parts were not growing as his old body had been.  His lips felt funny and he could not move them very well.  He began to grow slower and slower and his hands were bent instead of straight and also hard to use.  His ears were not in the right place and he could not hear very well.

Noah really wanted to travel to Earth and be part of this family.  He really wanted to play with Elijah and Jonah and all those little children in the river, so he keep working really hard to grow his body and keep his heart beating strongly.

When his body was done growing and it was almost time for him to travel over the rainbow bridge, his body became too weak and he just was not strong enough to come out and play, so he said goodbye to this new body and went back to the clouds to live with Mother Moon and Father Sun again.  He was very sad and his family was very sad too.  Tracy, Josh, Elijah, and Jonah missed Noah so much and wished that he was able to play with them.

Noah told Mother Moon and Father Sun that one day he might want to come back in a different body that wasn't so hard to grow in, but for now he would stay playing ball in the clouds and watch his Earth family from above.  And indeed, every day, he looks through that hole and watches them and whenever his family misses him, they can wave to him from below.

Loving someone you never knew

Some days I am blown away by the amount of love I have for someone I only met after his death.
I certainly was not prepapred for how hard it would be to lose him.  It felt like a bomb had hit, one I had no idea was coming even with months of preparing for all possible outcomes.

Many people know me well, they know the mother I am: the organic, protective crazy woman armed with research on screen viewing and young brains and who slept with her oldest until he was seven and nursed him until he was five.  So one can imagine what it might have been like for me to leave my baby in the hospital with strangers to never see him again.

I was blown to bits, I didnt recognize myself at all.  I don't cry easy, and I cried for five days straight.
Everything I thought I would feel was not present at all, but instead replaced with utter grief.  I didn't want to see anyone I loved except those that were present at his birth.  It was as if they were there with me when the bomb exploded and because of that, I felt drawn closer to them and wanted them around all the time.
I have been broken-hearted, sad, and depressed before, but loss is different.
I spend a lot of my days attempting to hold normal conversations with people about everyday things like the car breaking down or about their recent vacation, or even my recent vacation,  but most of the time I want to scream, "do you know what just happened, my baby died!"

So here are some things I want you to know about the person I am now, who somedays is not anyone I recognize:

• My love for Elijah and Jonah had nothing to do with Noah                                                       "It's a happy life, but someone is missing.  It's a happy life AND someone is missing."       -Elizabeth McCracken
• I count every day of what would have been his life, I always know exactly how old he would have been and so does the rest of my family.  I think we always will                                    "Your friends may say 'time heals all wounds'.  No it doesn't, but eventually you will feel better.  You'll be yourself again.  Your child will still be dead."  -Elizabeth McCracken
• When people don't mention him or what just happened to us, it makes me feel isolated and alone in this reality.  You cannot remind me that he died, I feel it all the time                        "Our child dies a second time when noone speaks his name."  -Mitch Carmody
• How I approach life with my children has differed, at least internally.  I no longer think, "that won't happen to me" or "everything will be fine".  In fact, there is an intense video in my head anytime there is any danger anywhere close.  I visualize it happening and feel for a moment that it just has.  I have to remind myself before I react that it hasn't happened yet and approach my children in that way.  The other day Elijah was acting as bat boy for his dad's team and I almost stopped him because I was so sure he was going to get hit by the bat of the player on deck.  I have visualizations of my boys dying from such injuries.  I know some of this is normal for all mothers, but the panic that accompanies it now is different.                         "Once you have been on the losing side of great odds, you never find statistics comforting again." -Elizabeth McCracken
• I have read a lot and remarkably all of what I have read has been raw, and comforting, and has allowed me to know that I am not alone and I will survive this.  Mostly though, the authors have taught me so much about being present for someone as they grieve.  Before Noah, I never would have known what to do, now, I think I understand.                                                        "On good days I can look ahead and understand that I will always be becoming who I am.  On good days, grief is part of me that I can learn to carry.  But I am wise enough to know that I will need you to restore me to myself on the bad days, when the most I can do is so much less"  -Elyria Rose

While it is true that people have to go back to their lives and cannot be there in a way that I always want, it is also true that I am so fortunate for what I have experienced since his diagnosis and his death.  I was not told, like many woman that I had to get over it when leaving the hospital or to move on because of my other children.  Instead I have countless cards, phone calls, dinners, flowers, and love. Instead I have the love and understanding of an enormous tribe.

• I have friends who have left their families for days to be with me
• I have family who dropped everything to fly hundreds of miles to meet their nephew/cousin not knowing if they would ever get to see him again or if they would even get to see the color of his eyes
• I have midwives who climbed into bed to hold me while I cried
• I have women who have faced the same fate and whom have become a family I never would have wanted and who came over and shared there stories so we could cry together
• I have a therapist who came to the hospital and to my house to hold my hand while my body healed and milk dropped from my breasts and gave us a beautiful piece of art to hold our memories of Noah inside
• I have mothers from my school holding their own babies who hugged me simultaneously despite the fact that facing baby death must have ripped them apart from the inside out 

I know I will survive not despite Noah, but because of him.  Because of what he gave others who in return gave to me.

Noah is now:  a urn, a quilt hanging above my bed, a dream catcher, a memory keeper.  He is a picture of a pregnant belly, a friend's watercolor picture painted of cloud boy.  He is river rocks I collect.  He is the blanket he was wrapped in.  He is a garden and a treehouse.  He is irreversible lessons about life, love, connection, longing, and loss.  What a legacy for someone who never took a breathe outside my womb.