Bubble Wrap
Letting go is hard
My nephew L was born a little over five months after my son Gabriel died, in October of 2003. I will never forget walking into the delivery room where my exhausted sister-in-law looked up at me, new baby in her arms, her face alight with joy, her smile bright and hopeful.
And I burst into tears.
I’m not ashamed of my reaction. In the timeline of loss and grief, five months is zero time. For my sister-in-law’s sake, I wish I could’ve held it together for five minutes, or however long it takes to at least say “congratulations!” But five months is just long enough for some of the shock to start wearing off, and some of the real hurt to start breaking through.
My reaction in that second — two steps into a room with new parents and their child— was raw and honest, encapsulating everything I was feeling. I may have managed to apologize, I truly do not remember, but looking back now, I feel like my outburst of grief was unfair to my baby nephew, to my SIL and her then-husband.
It’s not their fault that their baby lived and my baby died. I was glad their baby lived because I would never wish the depth of babyloss grief on anyone. But grief does its thing, man, and grief is unsparing and unfair. I even feel bad for my husband and in-laws, who were in the room too. It was not a great way to handle a happy situation.
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This past June, we went to Virginia to celebrate L’s high-school graduation, and I won’t lie: my feelings were complicated. I am happy for my nephew, so proud of the man he is becoming. I am happy for my sister-in-law, and I wouldn’t have passed up celebrating with her and our family for anything.
But my grief made a resurgence, quiet and implacable. Gabriel would have been 19, probably finishing his freshman year of college this summer. In addition, my rainbow baby will graduate a year from now.
And I’m not ready to let her go.
“Every new beginning is some other beginning’s end…”
— Semisonic, “Closing Time”
I didn’t know my heart would keep breaking. I didn’t know, when my uncle who lost his son at 22 years of age, told me “You don’t have to get over this” that I wouldn’t get over it, that it would color the next 19 years and three children.
I didn’t know that sometimes I would look at my children with a heart full of hope and love, full to bursting with pride for them, for their strength and joy, and my heart would feel like it was going to stop, like it was going to break open because how can hearts hold so much without breaking. Or that I would regard their difficulties with a heart nearly stopped in fear, because I don’t want their hearts to break, and I don’t want them to struggle or suffer.
I have never been a graceful person. I live with many unexplained bruises on my limbs. A friend used to joke that I should wrap my babies in bubble wrap when they learned to walk. I wish I could wrap them in bubble wrap now, only as an emotional buffer, not physical.
Some days it nearly kills me that I can’t protect them from the pain inherent in being a human and living. Even though I know, because no one protected me. (Not because they didn’t want to. Because it can’t be done.)
My children start a new school year this week. My rainbow baby is a senior and going to in-person school for the first time since 2019; my middle child is a sophomore, and starting technical school; my youngest is going into sixth grade. Anxiety is running high.
It’s mostly going to be okay. They will do well in their classes and they will have friends. It won’t be perfect, and there are parts that will suck. People are awful sometimes, and life is hard. My advice isn’t very helpful. “Take deep breaths.” “Hang in there, stay the course.” “It gets better.”
I can’t wrap them up, and I have to let them go anyway. So I will take the deep breaths, and try not to let my heart break more.
