Despite Knowing the Journey and Where it Leads…

“Despite knowing the journey and where it leads…I embrace it. And I welcome every moment of it.”

– Louise Banks’s monologue, Arrival

*Trigger warning: Personal accounts of stillbirth/child loss and grief are mentioned in this post.*

My sweet Ezra,

Today is your first birthday. A part of me marvels at the idea that it’s already been one whole year. Then, another part of me thinks, “How can it have only been one year?!” Time stopped for me, but I remain an observer to the ever rapidly-moving world around me. I remember sitting with you, singing and talking to you that final Sunday in May. In the mirror, I could see myself growing, and was only made excited by the prospect of becoming more planetary by the moment. I can even remember telling you about the pastel lights, in a long row of lanterns in front of a neighborhood just down the street from ours, turning on as I drove home from work that same day. Honestly, it stings to think of the moments before your death…to consider how normal and blissful everything was before my whole world was turned upside-down.

Every day since you died, you have been at the forefront of my brain. Doing anything is a struggle, and requires what feels like a herculean amount of focus and intent. I find myself constantly bargaining. While I know time won’t magically turn back the moment the clock strikes 6:42AM on June 1st, I keep hoping it will. Hoping that this year was a nightmarish test of some kind, and that one day I’ll wake up to find you sleeping soundly in a bassinet by my bed after I’ve learned the appropriate lesson.

I have this image in my head of you at about two years of age, coming up behind me and wrapping yourself around my neck in a tight hug. At work, I stare longingly at brand new 33-weekers sleeping soundly in their isolettes. More and more, I wonder who you would be today. It’s a miserable exercise, honestly, pondering the things that will never be. But all of the love I have for you has to go somewhere, so I find myself daydreaming about the incredible person you’d be if you were still here with us.

For as sad as I am on this day, I want you to know that I love you. And, despite the pain of this year…even if I had known what was going to happen, I would not trade the 33 weeks and four days of your life for anything else. You are my mine, and I am yours. Forever.

Happy birthday, my sweet, precious boy…

Ezra Wilde Kovach, 1 June 2020

4 East

The last child I held

was dead for at least twelve hours.

Sometimes life has a way of coming to the end

before it’s even started.

The hall was quiet with the deafness of

mourning, but there was a peace in your room

I never want to understand.

And your sweet husband was holding your boy

on his skin like a prayer

and I thought

Oh, to be loved like that.

I did my best to memorize him,

take in the slight fingers and the

soft brown hair,

but I didn’t see the color of his eyes

or the tiny little hairs on his tiny little legs.

I never got a chance to hear him say mama

or watch as he

lifted his head for her voice,

but I did hold his body at the same

precise moment as

God.

I still hate when people say things like

He would’ve started kindergarten this fall

but he would’ve turned one this winter

and two the next, which feels like

a mounting hurdle as opposed to

the healing of time.

And this whole thing is preposterous

because he’s not my son

and there’s no way I could understand.

I guess I just wanted to tell you

I miss his slight fingers and

soft brown hair

and I also mourn

for the things we will never know.

-Megan Ulrich, Return Unto Me