Little Brother

The saddest thing happened today, well maybe not the saddest, but it really tore at the old heart strings. Today the cat was lying in the bassinet I bought for Deklan. I don't know why its still in the living room, but it is. It sits in the spot it was in waiting for us to bring him home. Bedhead and I put it together a couple of weeks before he was born. Anyway, I run over and shoe the cat out of it. "You can't be in there" I say to her. Then Piper says, "Ya, Deklan's gonna sleep in there."

As well as we have tried to explain death to her, her little 2 year old mind doesn't quite get it. She thinks he is still at the hospital. Sometimes she says she misses him and wants to go back to the hospital and see him. The fact that she believes we left him there saddens me. I never left him alone there while he was alive. Even in death I could not leave him there. We carried him to the funeral home's waiting van before we left the hospital the evening he passed.

She is so crazy about babies, as all 2 year olds are. She doted on her little brother. "He's so tiny." "He's so cute." Every time someone talked about him that's what she'd say. She was supposed to be the big sister. The birth order is all screwed up now. Its just one of the things you'd never think of until something like this happens and you're alone with your thoughts. I wonder what it must be like to have another baby, when the baby gets to be older than the child you've lost, how that must feel. They'd have a big brother, but we'd only known him as a baby. He was THE BABY to us. Or losing an older child. I can't even imagine that kind of pain. I guess its hard no matter how you slice it. Its not the natural order of things.

In two days he would have been 6 months old. He would have been starting some solids. Growing out of sleepers. Rolling around on the carpet. Hanging on his big sisters' every word. I wish he was here so I could lie him down in the little bed that his sister and I put together for him. I just want to hold him again. I miss him. We all do.