Sweet Heft

In those early, dark days right after Kerian died, the glare of my grief was so bright I was blind, and the buzzing in my ears blared so loudly I could hear nothing else besides Mister 10,000 Volts (Mr. 10Kv), Kerian’s then three-year-old brother who still needed his mama. The ferocity of those sensations was heightened by the weather—it was the last day of August, and here in Virginia, even in early September, the heat and humidity are still intense. When we left the hospital the evening he died, the summer sun still loomed high above us as Pierre-Francois (PF) and I staggered out from the overly-cold PICU unit into the suffocating heat. My empty arms felt leaden at my sides as my arms and legs often do in my nightmares, and I wanted to fill them with Kerian so badly I could swear my muscles burned.

The first book I read after Kerian died was called Waiting with Gabriel, by Amy Kuebelbeck. In that excruciating, beautiful book, she wrote about her discovery during pregnancy that her baby boy (Gabriel) had a congenital heart defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS). She recovered her composure well enough after the diagnosis to decide to carry him to term, deliver him, and to lovingly live his precious little lifetime alongside him in comfort care. In a paragraph of the delivery scene, she used a term that burned itself into my mind with the bright light of truth: “sweet heft.” That’s how she describes the feeling of having the sweet heft her beloved Gabriel, clean and swaddled after delivery, placed gently into her arms by a nurse. And if you have held your own beloved infant in your arms, you understand like I do what she means by that sweet heft of a newborn’s weight.

As I wrote this draft, it was Saturday, February 25, 2012, and spring was already making its gentle approach. I could hear birdsong outside my living room window, a melodious reminder of the coming of the season of resurrection. And yet, for me, for my family, during this particular spring, we have these painful truths to reconcile: the earth goes on turning, the seasons go on changing, and life without Kerian continues. Father Time drags me into the future while I dig my fingernails into the drywall to try to prevent it, because I am desperate to remember. My memories, some photographs, and one video are all that I have left of Kerian.

On that morning of February 25^th, I awoke thinking of Kerian, and wishing that I could go into the bedroom he was to have shared with his big brother, Mr. 10Kv, and pick him up out of his crib and snuggle him to my chest. In my dawn-of-dreams-inspired imagining, Kerian was plump, crimson-cheeked, and whole—a perfect Gerber baby at six and-a-half months. This “vision” happened without trying, a natural phantom inspired by my proximity to sleep. It came to me—I did not purposely paint it in my mind’s eye. Before and since that time, no matter how hard I try, I cannot conjure up any face other than that of his thirteen day old self. I am frustrated by my lack of imagination and my inability to create for myself in my mind’s eye the chubby, happy, cooing baby boy that Kerian would surely be had he been born whole, and survived. My frustration is amplified by my fear that I will forget—forget details of Kerian’s short life. I want always to remember the sweet smell of his hair, the warmth of his cheeks beneath my lips when I kissed him, every nuance of his sweet face. But memory falls victim to the cruelty of time my friends; like a miser’s riches stored under the mattress, it dwindles into rations rather than growing while stored safely in a bank.

On February 25^th, when I started this post, it was six months to the day that PF and I still had optimism that our Kerian would rally, that the tangled mass of his poorly-developed heart could be repaired by medical alchemy. We were innocent child-parents who believed in magic, in miracles, in doctors, and in resurrection. We had so many encouraging signs in the first few days of Kerian’s week-long stay in the PICU that we were able to hold on to hope while we longed to hold him in our arms. Alas, you know the end of Kerian’s earthly story—his survival was not to be. Notice that I did not say it was not meant to be—because it’s not that it wasn’t “meant” to be. He simply did not survive, but surely he was meant to have lived on, safely with his loving family. And it did not take me very long after his death to reconcile the subtle difference between the two statements, “was not to be,” and “was not meant to be.”

It was not to be that Kerian would ascend like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes. Instead, I, his mother, must day after day, step after step, continue my slow climb out of the punishing hole of grief, despite my now jaded beliefs about rising again, and despite the weight of what I carry with me. So tonight, one day after Kerian’s seven month birthday, as I write about these emotional stones on my back, I realize that I am living with my fear of forgetting what I still remember, agonizing over my guilt for forgetting what I already have, and missing his sweet heft.