I Will Always Come Back

I had a long day the other day, starting with a birth call at 3:30am. I crept out the front door that my dad had just crept in, and relished in the exhilarating freshness of the early morning air. The baby was born at 5am - quick! I finished postpartum care around 8am, and had four appointments left in my day. I decided to push through and stay with it; rescheduling everything was more trouble than powering through a long day. I did sneak in a nap in our extra exam room at the birth center; broken as sleep usually is during the daytime, especially ‘downtown’ with street noise and such.

When I finally got home around 4:30pm, I was bleary-eyed, but doing ok. Jack seemed ok too, but toward bedtime, he started deteriorating in mood and manageability. It was a sloppy finish to the day, wrangling him into bed with the most patience I could muster, and also fighting fiercely for a reasonable bedtime. For us both.

Something about his mood and energy sunk in a little deeper the next morning. During our usual morning snuggle when he wakes up, I said that it had been a long day of work for me yesterday, huh? And I had left unexpectedly, so his preschool drop-off was with Grandad instead of me, as he has been expecting.

Then I decided to dig a little deeper. I asked him if he remembered when Dada Matt didn’t come back. He said yes. My heart blipped a little; sorrow, amazement, awe… Jack was 15 months old when Matt died; just starting to get stable on his chubby little legs. Saying a few words.

He had been absolutely in love with his Dada. If I was home with Jack, and Matt came back from wherever he was, Jack would start wiggling like a puppy, kicking his legs and shrieking with excitement until Matt picked him up and gave him his usual warm hello in his kind, deep voice.

Undoubtedly, Jack had noticed his absence. And noticed that I sat, incapacitated with grief, for much of the months to follow. In fact, Jack got his worst sickness ever a week or two after Matt died. There were about 24 hours during which I thought he had whooping cough. My body would tense with his when he coughed and wheezed, terror for his safety paralyzing me, imagining my worst fear of having to bring him to the hospital; or worse. When I wasn’t paralyzed, I would will his lungs not to wheeze, and somehow managed to bring myself back to the present moment, during which were not in the ER, and my baby was alive.

Jack cleared that sickness just fine. But I know that the lungs are said to be where we process sadness. My poor, fatherless baby…

Now he is more than twice the age he was when Matt died; three years and a month old.

During that conversation about Dada Matt not coming back, I also asked Jack if that makes him nervous that I wouldn’t come back. Again, he said yes. Deep breath.

I told him that even though I have to leave unexpectedly sometimes for a birth and I don’t always get to say goodbye, that I will always come back.

I have confidence in saying this, because even if the worst thing possible ever happened and I couldn’t really come back because I was dead, I know my soul would still return to him and assure him that I loved him and that we would be ok. Like Matt did for me.

Then Jack saw a toy on the floor and our conversation was over.

A day or two later, I realized that my end of the conversation with Jack felt incomplete. Again during our post-wakeup snuggle, his body warm and toasty from being under the blankets, I brought Jack to my chest and asked if he remembered our conversation about Dada Matt from the other day. He said yes.

I told Jack that I wanted to say more… that Dada Matt would absolutely have come back if he could have. He had had an accident and his body wasn’t working anymore. I told Jack that he hadn’t done anything to make Dada Matt not come back. That he loved being Jack’s dad. Loved him so much, that his soul hangs out with us and watches us and helps us.

Tears snuck out the corners of my eyes as I lay on my back, my three-year-old laid against the length of me, his head on my chest, his body completely relaxed. I cradled his head, his silky blonde hair smooth through my fingers. I felt him open, soaking up my words; the truth of that love pouring out of my heart and words and eyes. Any line that had separated his body from mine was, for that moment, erased.

“Dada Matt was so happy to be your dada,” I whispered fiercely. "And I am so happy and so proud to be your mommy. I just wanted you to know that.”

“I know that,” he said, softly but surely.