Letter to a Lost Child - An Echo

Letter to a Lost Child – An Echo
25-12-12
100 Themes #84 – Echoes

I wrote you a similar letter once before,
Exclaiming how much I miss you
And what you meant to me.
But this time of year,
When we remember loved ones,
Calls for an echo of that letter.

I knew about you before the tests showed you were there.
When there was no blood, I worried, and Googled,
And counted days.
I knew, deep in my heart,
And I rejoiced at the life you were.

When I knew officially, once the pee’d on stick
Had shown its faint pink line,
And my blood tests had come back positive,
Though not as positive as they should have been.
I was worried, but happy.
I should have heeded the warning signs;
The faint pink line when it should have been stronger,
The tiny amount of you in my blood when there should have been more;
Something was wrong from the start,
But I didn’t listen to the nagging fears,
I listened to the worries of others
And the happiness in my heart.

He didn’t want a thing to do with you,
But still wanted a relationship with me.
Secretly, he told me he was proud to have been able
To create you, proud that his sperm were so strong
As to be able to penetrate PCOS and the pill;
Perhaps we should have used more of the condoms
My mother got us for free.
He was proud of his sperm,
But he was not proud of you.

He saw you as an obstacle to his dreams,
Questioning me with things like;
“Where will we find the money?”
And
“Why do you talk of it as if it’s a child
When it’s only a bunch of cells
That will ruin our lives?”

We fought over email,
Your father and me,
But when he said
That he would have respected me more had I aborted you
Because that’s the type of woman he values,
Then I knew that we had grown too far apart
To connect again.
And I knew you would never be his child,
Because he wouldn’t let you.

And then the bleeding started, and I worried, and I Googled.
A trip to the emergency room sent me home
With instructions to raise my feet,
And all was good.
I saw you the next day for the first time,
And before you had a name you had a nickname
-Beanie-
My little pulsing human-bean.

But again there were warnings of imminent danger.
Your due date according to size
Did not match the calculations according to last menstrual cycle.
You were a bit too small.
I didn’t care –
You were alive and you were my love;
You were going to be my miracle
That survived a crushed relationship.

Another scan, another warning I ignored.
You weren’t as big as you should have been
And your due-date was pushed back further.
You would have been born in May 2011 – the
Same month as me.

And then the bleeding started and I worried,
Because raising my legs didn’t help.
The dog stayed with me all night,
As if she, too, sensed what was happening.
I knew in my heart that you were gone.
You couldn’t have survived that much blood.
And I was crying even before the scan that took a thousand years proved it.

And so you were aborted, dead already,
And I lost both you and your father.
I miss you more.

You would have been one this year, 2012,
And celebrating the first Christmas you could unwrap presents.
There wouldn’t be much,
As we are skint,
But we would have made a plan.
We would have shown you the wonder of a tree,
Taken you to sit on Santa’s lap,
Showered you in love
To replace the presents we could never afford.

Yet here I sit again, writing to you.
You already know how much I loved you then,
And how much I still love you now,
So what more can be said?

Only that I miss you every day,
And you helped me understand why some people hate Christmas;
Because not having you here with me
Kills that something inside
That would let out the magic and joy.

I miss you my boy, every second of every day,
And I’m so sorry that my body couldn’t hold on to you,
That it couldn’t love you as much as my heart could.
I’m sorry my love wasn’t enough to sustain your life
And wonder if you would have done better
With two parents egging you on;
I chose to leave him, cut him out of my life,
Did I make a mistake that cost you yours?

I blame myself, my body, my mind, all of me,
For not being able to hold on to you.
And this Christmas,
As I echo the letter I wrote you a few years ago,
I still echo the sentiments.

You were mine and I loved you.
You will always be my first,
And I will always love you.