Three weeks after burying my newborn son, I gave away everything I’d bought for him to a desperate mother with a baby. For the first time since his death, I slept through the night. But before sunrise, my lawn was covered with dozens of baby strollers—and what waited inside them made no sense at all.
Morning sun filtered through the dusty blinds of Noah’s nursery, laying long, pale stripes across a crib that had never held him.
I stood in the doorway, unable to step inside, unable to walk away.
Three weeks had passed since my little boy died in the hospital.
His little outfits were folded on the changing table where I had left them.
My little boy died in the hospital.
The diapers sat unopened.
The stroller waited in its box by the closet.
Thomas and I assembled it once for a practice run down the hallway, then packed it away again.
Thomas was also gone now.
***
A week ago, I’d stepped into our bedroom and caught him packing.
“You’re really leaving me?” I’d said.
Thomas was also gone now.
“I can’t stay here,” he answered. “Every time I walk past that door, I feel like I’m being buried alive.”
“He was your son, Thomas.”
“That’s exactly why I can’t look at any of it.”
He zipped up his suitcase.
“So you’re walking away… from him. From me. Two weeks after we buried him.”
“I can’t stay here,”
He looked at the carpet.
“I asked you to pack the nursery,” he said quietly. “Weeks ago. You wouldn’t.”
“Because it’s his room. I’m not ready—”
“It’s an empty room, Kate. It’s an empty room and it’s killing both of us.”
“How do you think I feel? I’m the one who carried him. He was alive inside me, kicking and moving, and then he came out into the world and… he was gone.”
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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