I love you forever

When Oliver died we didn’t just lose a baby. We lost his first day of kindergarten. His first tooth. We lost his high school, college (and maybe more) graduations. We lost the family he might have someday had and the adult he would become. And for a few months, sitting in the dark in my bedroom, I mourned all of it. Not just the diapers I wouldn’t change and the milk that piled up in the freezer, but his entire future.

 

This morning I read a blogpost about the book “I Love You Forever” by Robert Munch. The article described how the book was written for his stillborn children and it suddenly made sense.

 

 

 

In the past, reading it, I always thought it was creepy that the mother broke into her adult son’s home. I’m fairly certain that is restraining order territory for most adults. I always thought it was written for children, just like his other books, which take things to an area of hyperbole that doesn’t make sense for adults.

 

Now I read that book as a loss parent, and I see it in a whole new way. The mother rocking a baby who she can’t hold. Who won’t ever try to flush a watch, or be a teenager, or have a family. Her rocking him like a baby makes perfect sense, because that is all he will ever be.

 

I love that for most families, that isn’t the message of the book at all. Most parents I think just respond to the poem.

 

“I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always,
as long as I’m living
my baby you’ll be.”

 

It isn’t exclusive to babies who are lost. Any parent can identify with this love, and this feeling. I’m grateful today for this book, because it articulates something so hard to explain.

 

Dear Oliver:

“I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always,
as long as I’m living
my baby you’ll be.”

Love Mama