If I Should Die Before I Live

LATE at night, well past tiredness, and wired in the reality of experience, I held him, bathed him, and shared him with family, before we all had to rest.

He was already at peace.

I’ve often wondered whether losing a child I’d known and experienced is harder than losing a child who never lived.  I think it must be.  That is my solace for having lost our baby son.

And still, there are the myriad unknowns and the copious unknowables about his life, having died before he saw light, or having seen the light before any of us still living.

He is gone, but only from present grasp.  He is gone, but he’s closer to me now than he was yesterday.

I wonder often if he had have lived the operations he would have had to right his congenital diaphragmatic hernia in order to reposition his organs — to make sustained life viable.  But we were told his was the worst case scenario.

No chance at life.  We prayed.  We believed.  We hoped.  And we did experience miracles; just not that kind that could keep him alive.

We strode a journey over those 122 days, and not one of those days was a waste.  God filled them up with experience, real and true.

Many times we would ponder what he might say to us if only he could speak.

We might imagine him starting to say, as if to recognise the possibility that what could happen would, he might say, “If I should die before I live…”

But we cannot know the answer, but to imagine him saying, “I will be waiting for you in heaven.”

And that’s good enough for me!

© 2016 Steve Wickham.