The last thing any of us needs is another cause, right? I think every month is approximately 5437689 kinds of awareness month; cheese pizza awareness, non-blinker using people are jerks awareness, obscure games of the 80’s awareness, blue cotton candy awareness… So many worthy causes have added funds to their research and multitudes to their voices by having an awareness date or month. I don’t want to diminish the value in this type of campaign, but I am just as sick as the next gal of being perpetually inundated with the “cause awareness” month.

So when I tell you that October is Baby Loss Awareness Month, and October 15 is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, I’m not asking you to wear (yet another) ribbon. I’m not asking you to sponsor me on a walk, or to donate to a local group. I will ask of you two very simple things.

1)     Pray. Pray for the mommas and the daddies and the grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles and friends and all those left behind when our babies depart for heaven. Pray for those you never met or those you see every day who lost a child and never told you. Trust me, they are there. Pray for comfort and peace and hope. We need your prayers most of all.

2)     Live. Don’t take a single moment for granted. I know this is so hard, I even fall prey to it, but if there is one thing that stands out so readily in my mind it is how much we all take for granted. How easy it is to fall into the trap that life will just continue and things will just happen like we expect. They don’t have to; it doesn’t always work that way. Life is a remarkable gift and living it to its fullest is the only way to do justice for those of us who mourn.

The hospital where Joel was in the NICU (have I said enough good things about them yet? Here’s me, rave, rave, raving about the amazing people that make up Beaumont Hospital, their NICU and their social work office. I would never wish the NICU on any parent, but if they are there, I pray them a NICU of this caliber.) hosts an annual event to honor the babies who went to heaven. Leo and I attended on Saturday, it was beautiful. But my goodness, the babies. So many babies - and some parents who have attended for years, some who just said goodbye days ago. Too many babies, too many heartbroken families, and I know we were but a fraction of those who share our heartache. I hate that there are so many but it is such a reminder that Every. Single. Child. is a miracle. Every one.

This group of us, our miracles had gone on before us and so we said their names out loud, we lit candles, we cried, and we wrote notes to the little ones who left our arms so empty. And the notes were tied to balloons and the balloons went off without us. Just like our babies. Gone but not forgotten, disappeared but still very real.

On the left here is Joel’s balloon. I told him a lot of things, Leo said I should have copied it, but I said it was just between us and our baby.

And I let it go.

                 

And watched it drift away

                .

And went home.

When we left there was a gift waiting for us.