Due Date

May 12, 2012

"The death of a baby is like a stone cast into the stillness of a quiet pool; the concentric ripples of despair sweep out in all directions, affecting many, many people." - De Frain

I had always imagined this would be one of the happiest day of my life - the day my first child was due to enter this world. Unfortunately, instead it was a day filled with sadness and reminders of what might could have been. Since this day had been so significant in my pregnancy with Nolan, Marshall and I decided that it was a perfect day to remember him by. So, we had planned today as the day we would hold Nolan's memorial service on the beach.

I awoke fairly early today and went about making preparations for Nolan's memorial service by cleaning the house. It was when I took some trash out to the can that I first noticed it. There on our sickly gardenia bush which had yet to flower all year was one single white bud just beginning to flower. I couldn't believe it. Today of all days our gardenia had decided to bloom just one single flower. Some may say it was a sign from God. Perhaps it was. It most certainly was a reminder to me of Nolan. While Nolan wasn't able to be born on this day, that beautiful and sweet smelling gardenia flower was able to bud and flower today. The beautiful white flower reminded me of the innocence of my baby boy and his now angelic being. I smiled and paused long enough to smell the sweet flower and snap a picture or two of it.

It amazed me at the love and support we continue to receive throughout this whole thing. I imagined that after a few weeks people would go on with their lives and forget about us and our pain, but six weeks later that has yet to happen. Our friends and family continue to gather around us and throw their love at us.  We had many friends and family that travelled an hour and a half or two hours just to be with us today for Nolan's memorial service, most of whom never even had the privilege of meeting our precious baby boy. Marshall and I both were so grateful that all of these people cared about us and Nolan so much that they would take the time out of their day to travel down to Wilmington just to honor our son.

While I was pregnant, Marshall often sang to the baby and played his guitar for him. He often sang a lullaby with the verse "Daddy's little man, sweetest in the land." But there was one song which he often sang and which he always thought of when he thought of Nolan and that was "Beautiful Boy" by John Lennon.  At Nolan's memorial service, Marshall read the lyrics to John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy" and then read an old Irish Blessing which goes:

May the road rise up to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon  your fields,
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.

The significance of this blessing is that Marshall has part of this blessing tattooed on himself. The words "until we meet again" wrap around Marshall's bicep, ending the sleeve of tattoos he has. Since Marshall's background is Irish and we picked and Irish name for Nolan, we thought that reading this Irish Blessing was very meaningful. It was the last two verses that both Marshall and I chose to use in having a remembrance piece made for each of us to wear. Marshall chose dog tags with these verses on them and Nolan's name and birthdate, while I chose a bracelet. 

Marshall also chose to share with everyone a letter he had written earlier in the day to Nolan. He told me when he wrote it and tried to read it to me that writing down what he was feeling was much different than talking about it his feelings. As he wrote he began to cry and realized that writing reaches down to a place that verbal communication can't. 

Marshall found what I had long realized - writing is therapeutic. While it is often difficult and brings out a lot of emotions that you may be suppressing, afterwards you feel cleansed. It is as if the writing has detoxed your body of those painful feelings and you leave feeling renewed and ready to take on the world. That's not to be said that those feelings don't return, but for a moment you feel better.




I imagined most people expected that I would read something I had written too, being the writer that I am. While I did think about it, I also knew that anyone reading my Facebook page or my Blog would already have heard anything that I was willing to share. My deepest and most painful emotional writing is found only in my personal letters to Nolan, of which nobody has read. So, instead I searched high and low for someone else's writing that would say in more succinct words what I was truly feeling. Perhaps I would find a poem, since poetry never was my thing anyway. Indeed, I found just what I was looking for. When I showed it to Marshall a couple of days ago, he immediately wanted to read it at Nolan's memorial service but then realized that I was probably showing it to him because I wanted to read it. He was right. It said everything I was thinking in just a few short words. With just a few words to read, I also thought I could possibly make it through reading them without crying. The poem I found that I read at Nolan's memorial service sums up what I'm feeling today and everyday better than any words I could possibly write.

Tears

If tears could build a stairway,

and memories a lane,

I'd walk right up to Heaven

and bring you home again.

No farewell words were spoken

no time to say goodbye

you were gone before I knew it,

and only God knows why.

My heart still aches in sadness

and secret tears still flow,

what it meant to lose you,

no one will ever 
know.

My Mom (Nolan's YaYa) had always found it interesting that there appeared to be the number 3 surrounding Nolan. Nolan was born on the 30th day of the 3rd month (March) at 1:03am. He weighed 5lbs 3oz and was 21" long (a multiple of 3). For that reason, YaYa decided to get 3 blue heart shaped balloons to send up to the heavens to Nolan. YaYa, Marshall and myself all attached a note to one of the balloons with a personalized message to Nolan. We are a religious family that has always believed in the holy trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As my mom read a prayer she then said that the 3 balloons also represented the holy trinity.

Through all this hardship our friends and our family have been there with words of encouragement and support. Perhaps one of the most poetic has been our friend Shea. Shea and I went to high school together and played soccer together. Needless to say, we have known each other longer than we haven't at this point. She has posted some of the most beautiful words on her Facebook during all of this about her own experiences and feelings and about us. So much of what she has written has helped me to better deal with the sorrow. On the day Nolan was born Shea's status update said this, "Most people only dream of angels, today I held one." When we planned Nolan's memorial service I was hoping that Shea would once again decide to share her thoughts about Nolan. I didn't want to ask her as I most certainly did not want to make her feel obligated, but I was happy when I saw her at my house furiously writing something early today. I knew she must be writing something about Nolan.

Fortunately, she not only wrote a beautiful poem about Nolan, but she also decided to share it with everyone there. Marshall and I were hoping other people would decide to share their thoughts with everyone and we are glad that Shea, my Mom and my Dad all decided to do so. No matter how brief or how poetic their words were, they all mattered to us. As parents it was warming to hear other people speak about the profound affect our son's life and death had been on their own lives. I always knew my child would drastically change my life forever, but I never knew he would impact so many others too.

For one of Nolan's baby showers, our friend Stacey had taken some seashells and attached a pearl inside of each one and written different words inside of them like "love," "kindness," "honesty." They were meant to be wishes for Nolan that everyone would take and then toss into the ocean and say a little prayer for him. 

Unfortunately, at the baby shower Stacey forgot to tell everyone about them so only a few were actually taken. We decided we didn't want the wishes to go unwished, so we passed them out to everyone so they could take one and toss it into the ocean and say a little prayer to Nolan. As we did so, Marshall pointed out that yet 

again another set of threes was coming into play surrounding Nolan. This time it was the trilogy of the mother nature - land, water, sky. We let balloons go into the sky to reach Nolan in the Heavens and we tossed seashells into the ocean with wishes on them. We also had a dozen white roses that we also floated out to sea in honor of Nolan. I'm not much into numerology or what it all means, but one thing is for sure - threes are very special and rare.