This past week was our firstborn son’s eighth birthday. It was our seventh without him here. Another milestone reminding us of his absence. Losing a loved one is not a one-time event. Like birth, death brings its own anniversaries, its own milestones.
I grew up in southwest Washington, and never really traveled further north than Seattle. Eventually, when I did, I joked that, “This is the furthest north I’ve ever been. No, wait. This is the furthest north I’ve ever been. Now this is.” And so on.
The days keep spinning on after a loved one dies. Each moment is further and further from the last time we were with them. Each day is a new milestone. Each day is a new grief. A day on the pile of continued absence. “Death is the past that persists,” says Edmond Jabés. This is the longest I’ve gone without my son Emerson. No, wait. This is the longest I’ve gone without him.
Holidays, Birthdays
Certain days are more “milestone-y” than others. The first year after he died felt impossible to endure.
Christmas was 5 days after he died. We had already wrapped his presents. His cousins unwrapped them and took them home to honor him. We wanted to destroy all the holiday cheer around us. How could the world not be falling apart with us?
New Year’s: It was only 12 days since his death, but now the year was different. It was a whole new gulf between us and his life. He never breathed a breath in 2018. Somehow, time continued.
Signs of spring began to appear. Our son had died in winter. Now the earth itself was moving on. Flowers, greens, birds, honeybees, new life and new abundance. Our son’s final season faded away into the vibrant joy of springtime. Allison scolded the daffodils for blooming.
Allison’s birthday was the next challenge. How could we say “Happy Birthday” when happiness had fled from our lives? Instead we said, “It’s your birthday.” How could we ask “What do you want for your birthday?” I want my son back. Nothing else matters.
Mother’s Day: What does it mean to be a mother when your only child is dead?
Father’s Day: What does it mean to be a father when your only child is dead?
Emerson’s birthday. He missed his second birthday—and would miss every birthday thereafter. Instead of buying presents and asking him what decorations or desserts he wanted, we planned a family gathering to remember Emerson. We asked family to share stories and pictures, if they had any. It was a day to honor Emerson, but it was not easy.
Birth of brother Finley: In October, Finley was born. It was our second rodeo, so we would be experts in the birthing center, right? “By baby number two, every mom is a pro,” said some commercial. While Finley’s birth was easier in some ways, it was harder in others. I was nervous the whole time that someone I loved would die: my next son, my wife. Childbirth is a celebratory time, but a cloud of doom hung over the whole experience. Even after Finley arrived, healthy, and after Allison was discharged, healthy, I worried that something bad would happen, that disaster was right around the corner.
We had multiple baby monitors—cameras, sensors, wearables. “By baby number two, every mom is a pro.” Finley had acid reflux as a baby, and was most fussy and barfy at night. We stayed up through the night in his room, taking shifts. I got a lot of reading done for the MFA program I had just started. On top of normal parental worry was the trauma of having lost a child unexpectedly. Emerson died in his sleep and there is no known cause of death. The official “diagnosis” is Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood (SUDC). You can imagine the stress this caused whenever we put Finley down to sleep. “Sleep when the baby sleeps,” goes the so-called advice. We could not. We woke up often to check that he was still breathing. We sometimes didn’t trust the monitors. And sometimes the alarm turned red and beeped. Usually the body-monitor had fallen off, a false alarm. Every dip in O2 or heartbeat was an omen. We lived in fear. “Kids are resilient, they’ll be fine, let them sleep in.” These were no longer sound pieces of advice.
Thanksgiving: What did being thankful mean when our first son was dead? We loved that our secondborn was here, but his presence was a reminder of our firstborn’s absence. Finley would not get to play with or learn from his older brother. We had videos and pictures, but this is a pale shadow of a living, growing brother.
The Anniversary Effect
Your mind may be aware (or not) of the anniversary of a traumatic event. Your body, however, is more likely to be attuned to that anniversary. This can have physical or emotional manifestations. The first December after Emerson died, I was sad and depressed. As December 20 approached, I got more and more anxious—would something bad happen on this date again?
Then the date arrived. We tried to do something meaningful. We visited Emerson’s grave. We gathered with family to remember Emerson. The build-up to the date had been fraught with sadness, lethargy, and anxiety. The day itself almost felt like a relief. And the day after, the weight of the doom-cloud had been lifted.
As the second anniversary approached, anger was my primary emotion. I was irritable at home, short with people at work—I still had to plan the departmental Christmas Party because I was the logistics person, and I was not happy I had to do so. Christmas was a dark time for me. Anger was a low-flying cloud that went with me wherever I went. Anger was my foundation that December.
The third year, 2020, the whole world was locked down, quarantined, social distanced, etc. People talked about pandemic inconveniences in terms of grief. Grief is a spectrum of intensity, I know. But I also felt, at the time, like the word was cheapened when it described simply being not-in-person. My primary emotion that year was fear. My body was sure something bad would happen this year. I was on edge. As soon as the calendar shifted to December, I started having diarrhea almost every morning. (Maybe I should have just said digestion issues!) I was anxious most of the time. But again, once the anniversary date had passed, my body relaxed.
Measuring a Life
Emerson died when he was 18 months, 9 days old. June 29, 2019, was 18 months, 9 days after his death. The date came so quickly, underscoring how little time Emerson had been with us. It still felt like he had only died yesterday, but now his whole life could fit in the length of his absence.
In the week leading up to Finley turning 18 months, 9 days old, my jaw tightened and my stomach was nauseous. I had to take the day off from work. My jaw was so tight, my bite was misaligned and it was difficult to relax before going to sleep. In my mind, I knew that kids could live longer. But my body held different knowledge. There was a limit to life, and it was imminent. Then the day came and went. Once Finley was 18 months, 10 days old, my jaw finally relaxed.
Callen passed the 18-month-9-day threshold in February this year. My body did not respond as strongly this time; with Finley being 5 years old, I have proof that my children can live past what we call “Emerson’s age.” I still took the day off from work. Allison and Finley were on mid-winter break, so the three of us went cross country skiing. Sometimes being active and getting out in nature helps us connect with our grief and with Emerson.
Milestones of Growth
In one sense, everyone loses their baby. In the normal course of life, the child grows, and parents receive the “next version” of their kid, continuous and discontinuous at the same time—similarity and difference, continuity and change. We call this “growing up.” It happens gradually, day by day.
Some parents lose their child and never receive the next day’s version. That’s what happened to us with Emerson. Aside from holidays and birthdays, there are other, less obvious milestones that we notice, that shoot a little more pain into our hearts.
Emerson never got to attend preschool. In 2021, he would have started kindergarten, likely at the school where Allison teaches. In 2022, he would have started first grade. Next week, he would have been finishing up second grade. (We’ve met more than a few people in the last year who have children in second grade. It saddens us that Emerson could have been friends with them.)
Allison teaches elementary P.E., so she sees all the kids in the whole school. In 2021, she asked all the kindergarten teachers to put a blue heart in their classroom to represent Emerson. We don’t know which class he would have been in, so each classroom gets a symbol of his missed presence. The teachers don’t talk to the students about it (as far as I know), but the blue heart is there, in the classroom, a quiet presence. In 2022, the first grade teachers got the blue hearts. And this year, the second grade teachers put them up. Sometimes Allison tells students about her son who died. Sometimes she gets to share the gift of his life with those who would have been his peers.
We will not get to see Emerson transition from elementary to middle school. We will not see Emerson graduate high school in 2034, or—if he’d chosen this path—college beyond that. We will never know what career or hobbies or friends Emerson would have pursued. We will never know if Emerson would have chosen to get married or to have children. There is a whole line of descendants that will never be possible because Emerson died.
But most devastating of all, we will never get to see—in this life—how Emerson would have loved and shown kindness, what he would have taught us about life. We will never get to create new memories with him on this earth. Milestones, memories, everyday moments. We miss his daily presence in our lives.
Recognizing Milestones
About a week after Emerson died, we saw a grief counselor for the first time. We were raw with trauma, tired from crying, and overwhelmed by the details of planning a funeral. The world was collapsing underneath us and we were falling through darkness. The counselor told us that this feeling would not last forever. We didn’t believe we would ever feel anything else. The rest of our lives, we thought, we would be weighed down by inarticulable sorrow.
The first year of milestones was hard. We thought that gathering family around us was the best thing. We thought that having them share stories and memories and photos and videos was the best thing. We thought planning a liturgy, lighting candles, organizing a group craft project was the best thing.
But then each milestone felt like a burden. We had to plan something. Our families and friends asked, “What are you planning? What do you want? How can we help?” We wanted something meaningful, something healing, something that engaged others but was also balm to us. We didn’t know what we wanted. We couldn’t know. We wanted our son back. That was it. That’s what we wanted.
The first year, we planned something for each milestone. After that, we planned a gathering for family at Emerson’s birthday and his death anniversary. We learned, through trial and error, which things worked and which didn’t, which things hurt and which felt safe.
We learned that gift-giving at Christmas was too painful. We refrained from gifts for a few years, before reinstating them slowly. We learned that we liked to get away during the winter break, but that we could not be on vacation on December 20. We learned that people only had so many memories and photos they could share from Emerson’s 1.5-year life. We learned that going to his grave was not as meaningful for us as it was for other people. We learned that planning smaller moments of meaning was more beneficial and less stressful. We learned that we sometimes would prefer to be alone, without friends or family on those milestones. Sometimes, all we had to do was take work off and go for a hike, sit at the beach, or look at photos and videos of Emerson.
We’re 6.5 years out from his death, and we’re still learning what we want to do for these missed milestones. Milestones of missing our son. This year, on his birthday, Allison and I took off work and spent the day together. We went grocery shopping, then sat at a nearby beach park and talked. In the evening, Finley helped me bake a brownie cake. We lit eight candles and sang happy birthday. We all blew out the candles together.
Our grief counselor was right. Grief has lightened over time. It is more of a companion than a monster now. The anniversary effect has been less intense for me the last two Decembers. But the milestones will continue to be a part of my life. They are like signs on a path I used to travel, but now only see from a distance from the path I’m actually on. I’m learning to accept my present path even while longing for the milestones on the other one.
Nate, this is really… what? What is this? I was going to say “lovely,” but that doesn’t seem quite right. It’s gutting. Eviscerating. Raw. Open. Generous. And lovely.
How you must miss your boy. I’m so sorry he’s gone.