“I’ll see you in the sunrise, Mommy”

I wrote those piece more than a month ago, but am just finding the courage to share. Writing has always been my therapy, and this piece brought tremendous healing as I imagined what Sadie might say to me from heaven. 

“I’ll see you in the sunrise, Mommy”

By Regina Cyzick Harlow

April 2, 2017

As my body formed inside of yours, I was nurtured by your love. I knew my frame was not coming together as you expected, but I had to wait until a doctor could verify that for me. I wasn’t upset when you cried the day they told you “something was wrong.” I knew I wasn’t “wrong,” but I understood your tears. Your expectations were shattered. Yet I knew how deeply you loved me.

Daddy’s voice reassured me that through it all, we were going to be okay. You both referred to me as “Chickpea.” I still love that name.

I listened as you consulted with the geneticists and doctors about my diagnosis and was delighted that you chose life, when perhaps death “prepared and scheduled” might have seemed an easier option. I felt your body, tense from weeping, release tears into blankets, your hands, on the shoulders of loved ones, and sometimes even with strangers. I felt the hope you carried that, despite all odds, I was going to remain with you in physical form and not die.

I entered this world blue, without breath. Large hands of doctors and nurses cleared my airways so I could breathe. What was this thing called living, being alive? I went from the security and darkness of your womb into a sterile whirlwind of lights, medical staff, and other babies in the NICU, some alone, others with parents hovered attentively over them.

I wondered where you were, but they told me you had been through some pretty hard times and needed rest. After all, we would get to spend the rest of our lives together. We expected a lifetime of years, not hours.

I was so happy to see you during the day. I was comforted by the scent of your nearness when you were finally allowed to come close. The doctors and nurses were very good to me, but nothing could soothe me like your’s and daddy’s voices floating into my incubator. Those were familiar. Those were mine.

Later that day though, I could feel my little body struggling to breathe. You held me, your tears falling warm on my face. I wish I would have had the strength to wipe them for you. I felt myself slipping into another place, but I was reluctant to go. It was as if I could feel your heart shattering inside as you held me so desperately.

The doctors told you it was time to say good-bye. You gave me permission to move into the next place where I could sense I was being beckoned. You saw my body turn blue again. You heard the monitor switch to a gut-wrenching monotone beep, alerting the medical staff I was dead. You fell into daddy’s arms, weeping uncontrollably.

But mommy, what you saw was only part of the story. When I died I simply left my bars of bone and my house of flesh to transition into eternity. You saw my body stop breathing, but I was more fully alive than ever, breathing in the purest air of love and warmth and light. To go back to my little earthly body would feel clumsy and suffocating. My death certificate says I died because of “respiratory insufficiency,” but that was only earthly air for my earthly body. Here there is no lack of oxygen. Here my lungs breathe deep the air of angels.

The mountains and streams and wildflowers, the sunrises and sunsets and stars that help you feel so connected to me, I’m there, opening your eyes to the beauty beyond the veil of your flesh, the reality that the best is yet to come.

You’re still needed there, mommy. I’m safe and free here, but my brother and sisters and daddy need you, and many others who need to hear your story, our story, to know they’re not alone. I wish you knew how many children I play with here while you meet with their parents and siblings there. We have “Sadie Rose” meetings too, but the tears are absent because God himself has wiped them from our eyes.

Hold on mommy, because yet for a little while we are separated in body. But the day will come when you hold me again, and on that day I will take you to meet the One who has given you the hope and promise of our reunion. Until then, I’ll see you in the sunrise, in the faces of my siblings, and in the hearts and lives of others who know what it’s like to lose a child.