What Sam Has Taught Me

The buttercups have bloomed on the expansive patch of grass that you pass on the way into our neighborhood. That grass looks really beautiful when properly mowed, but once it gets a little overgrown the buttercups create a lovely yellow dotted illusion that Seurat himself would approve of. When I drive by it now, my eyes are drawn to the pretty little weeds covering the grass.

I remember the first time I noticed those buttercups last year. It was the day after we got back from the hospital. Mike and I drove to the funeral home to make the arrangements for Sam's funeral, and as we drove by the field of buttercups, it seemed so surreal. I knew they hadn't been there the morning we drove to the hospital. Maybe they had come and gone several times by that point as the grass had been cut, but the first time I really noticed them was on the way to the funeral home. I looked out at them, marveling. Somehow this one little thing in the world had gone on when everything else had completely stopped. I couldn't decide if I should be horrified or comforted by the fact that the world just kept spinning while I had been in this suspended state of agony. How did buttercups bloom even when my baby was dead?

It's crazy to think that a year has passed since Sam's birth. It's been an interminably long year, wishing I had my baby in my arms, milestones to celebrate, happy memories to store away of my kids playing together or snuggling with me, with their dad, with each other. But my current sense of deja vu also makes Sam's birth feel so much more recent. The memories of the days before and after are fresher with the spring air. As the world is once again burgeoning with new life, I too am anticipating a birth. The weather and season and this current pregnancy have been making it easy to reminisce about the days surrounding Sam's birth. The specifics of those weeks are coming back to me-- the scent of rain on pavement brings to mind the day that I didn't know yet I was in labor, where I dragged Ellie to Babies R Us to look for a new baby monitor that had two cameras. The bright green leaves that have finally filled out the trees are somehow a potent reminder of my near daily requests for Mike to stop at Panera and get a chicken salad sandwich for me on his way home, because for whatever reason, that was the only thing that didn't aggravate my heartburn. (No luck finding such a magical food this time around.) The bustle of spring cleaning and nesting all at once is familiar-- just a year ago I suddenly needed the entire house organized and cleaned and in order, and here I am again, following my husband and daughter around with a broom and a dustpan.

But who I am this year as I prepare for another birth is vastly different from the mother I was a year ago. Sam's presence and absence has changed me fundamentally, and the things he has taught me in his first year of death are like little gifts that I've been opening for the past 12 months, and I am grateful for them because they're all I have of him. My memories that have been triggered by the eruption of spring are bittersweet, but also somehow comforting to me-- like a deep bruise I can push so that the pain reminds me that Sam was real, that what happened to us was real, and that my perseverance through it has been both extraordinary and absolutely unremarkable-- it's not like I had any choice. The first lesson that Sam taught me was that, as it turns out, what doesn't kill you... doesn't kill you. Just like the buttercups keep pushing up through the dirt, you keep breathing and your heart keeps beating and even when others die, your life continues.

I'm keenly aware now that no one is immune from the hard stuff. The natural course of life involves death, or loss, or breakage. My experience with Sam has shown me that no matter how lucky you think you are, how ordinary your life seems to be, how much you already think you've paid your dues, no one gets to fully escape the shittier personal aspects of human existence, and now I am better equipped to offer support for those in the thick of it. As a society, we're, um, pretty terrible at dealing with grief or negative events in the lives of those close to us. But the need for empathy and support is greater than my discomfort at someone else's pain, and now I know how to put my own discomfort aside. Sam gave me Sad Shit Street Cred, and it's enabled me to see beyond my own comfort bubble into someone else's need for empathy. (By this I mean empathy that doesn't involve bullshit platitudes like, "This is all part of God's plan." If you're still saying this to people when they're sad, please stop.)

And every day as I parent my living child, Sam has taught me to appreciate her in a new light-- just for the spark of life that exists within her, for her heart that continues to beat just as mine does, for the delight we can take in her growth and development that is underscored by the absence of his-- for all the things we casually took for granted before we were confronted so personally with childhood mortality. My perspective on parenting has vastly shifted, and even as my patience runs thin at the end of this pregnancy and Ellie's temper tantrums reach a peak in frequency as she settles into threenagehood and life without regular afternoon naps, I recognize the impermanence of it all and appreciate it so much more deeply. Not that I think it's fun to be at the grocery store with a screaming child, but I'm all too aware now that a screaming child is an alive one, and some temporary humiliation in the cereal aisle isn't so bad when your new default is to compare everything to the deafening silence of a still baby.

The largest gift of all is the knowledge that if this baby inside me is born whole and healthy and screaming, I will feel gratitude beyond measure. I will look at my new baby and think, "If we hadn't had Sam, we wouldn't have you." The entire trajectory of our family planning has been altered. Of course we would not have chosen this, and it's not exactly a positive thing, but now we are adapting to it, and choosing to appreciate the things we have alongside being sorrowful for the things we lost is a blessing that Sam has left on my heart.

I know I haven't figured out everything about Sam's role in our family. A year barely scratches the surface of all he has to still teach me or the way our relationship will continue to evolve. Grief is a lifelong process that shifts and changes as you work your way through it. It's a common misconception that the five stages of grief that Kubler-Ross identified are a linear progression from denial to acceptance. Rather, they are merely identifiers for feelings we'll bounce among repeatedly forever, and at each stage of life these phases will manifest differently. But Sam's impact on me has undeniably made me a better mother and a more patient individual. Though his death has hardened me to plenty of other aspects of life that I used to have an easier relationship with, the gift of being a better parent is one that I'll get to unwrap daily with Ellie, and hopefully with the new baby, and Sam gave that to me and to his siblings.

Happy birthday, Sam. I wish we could spend it with you, watching you enjoy (or snub) some cake. I wish we could see you as a one year old instead of eternally thinking of you as a newborn that we just barely missed crossing paths with. I wish so many things could be different but since they're not, thank you for the birthday gifts you have given to me that have made it bearable to press on without you. And thanks for those buttercups.