Tell me about him

A beautiful post by Sara Barry, mother to Henry, who should be seven years old now. Sara is always full of sage words, and I’m so glad she decided to contribute this month. 

Tell me about him

Even now, nearly seven years after my son Henry died, I struggle through December. 

Last year over coffee in that ever dark month, my friend Beth looked at me across the table and said, “I wish I could do something, but I know I can’t. Can you tell me about him?”

I paused, because nobody asks that question. Perhaps the last time anybody asked me that question was when Carol sent a note from Empty Arms after my first meeting, giving me a space to talk about grief but also to tell about Henry himself—his “eyelashes and toes.” 

Usually people ask, “What happened?” 

I don’t blame them. It would be the question on my mind too if somebody told me their baby died. It’s a fair question but not an easy one. It makes me tell the hardest part of the story instead of the good parts.

I don’t get to talk about how we would lie on the couch together while our breaths settled into rhythm, both of us getting calmer and more peaceful, how his oxygen monitor showed me his oxygenation going up, his heart rate settling down.

I don’t get to remember how he wailed through is first bath or loved to suck his thumb. 

I don’t get to tell how he stared at the faces of people who held him or how he startled to his grandfather’s whistle. 

I don’t get to talk about how his smile flashed across his face like a cardinal across a winter landscape, lifting me up each time. 

Instead I talk about him being taken away to the NICU and about Down syndrome and heart defects. I tell about surgery and tense ambulance rides and how he almost died in October. I talk about how he got better, got home, got sick again. I remember racing to the hospital in a snowstorm as his breath deteriorated, how my husband got so sick he had to leave, how Henry coded more than once that last night. I’ll tell you how the machines started beeping and people came running, how I sang to him, and how he died on December 17. 

If you ask, “What happened?” I’ll tell you.  

I absolutely need spaces to tell that story and talk about grief. I need to tell and retell those hard parts. But I need to talk about love and hope and dreams too. 

“Can you tell me about him?” I needed the chance to talk about my son, and I didn’t even know it. I smiled and cried, and told her about my baby boy and his smile. 

Can you tell me about your baby? Your love? your dreams?