I WAS MOURNING MY BABY AFTER CHILDBIRTH — THEN MY 8-YEAR-OLD SON WHISPERED, "MOM, SHE'S NOT GONE. I SAW WHAT DADDY DID."
HE HAD BEEN SAVING COINS IN A PICKLE JAR TO BUY HIS SISTER BACK. AND WHEN HE TOLD ME WHY, I REALIZED HE HAD SEEN SOMETHING NO ONE WAS SUPPOSED TO SEE.
PART 1
I was mourning my baby after childbirth — then my 8-year-old son whispered, "Mom, she's not gone. I saw what Daddy did."
My 8-year-old was saving up money to buy his dead sister back.
Sixty-one dollars and forty cents, in an old pickle jar with a slot cut into the lid.
Coins. Crumpled dollar bills. His lunch money.
Even the twenty dollars his grandmother gave him for his birthday, which he'd been guarding for eight weeks.
Let me start from the beginning.
My name is Claire, and my son Eli waited seven months for his baby sister.
He talked to my stomach every single night.
He helped us paint her room pale yellow.
He spent three weeks picking out a stuffed rabbit, because "every little sister needs somebody to sleep with."
Then, at thirty-five weeks, the delivery went wrong.
I started bleeding.
The room filled with people, and none of them were talking to me anymore.
The last thing I remember is my husband Grant squeezing my hand, and behind him my mother pulling Eli backward out of the doorway with both arms around him.
They operated for three hours.
I got eleven units of blood.
They took my uterus.
Which meant I would never have another child.
I woke up at 12:40 in the morning, and Grant was sitting beside the bed with his eyes swollen almost shut.
I said, "Where is she."
And they told me our daughter hadn't made it.
I screamed until there was nothing left in me.
Grant held onto me, saying "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry" over and over.
I was too weak and too medicated to ask questions, so he handled everything.
Every form. Every phone call. Every conversation in the hallway.
There was no viewing. He said it would be "too hard" on me. He said he'd taken care of it.
I just wanted to go home and survive walking past that empty crib.
For two weeks I barely left my bedroom.
Eli went quiet too.
He stopped talking.
He'd stand in my doorway, look at me, and walk away.
