A Reason To Rain - Donna M Young (new reading TXT) 📗

the front of the ambulance, ‘You Are So Beautiful to Me,’ by Joe Cocker, playing loudly on the dashboard radio. Sights in slow motion, fragrance of gardenias and smells of pizza forever engraved on my memory. And, the vision of my baby’s distant stare permanently seared on my conscience.

I knew that I had not been there when my sons needed me. I didn't deserve to be a mother. I knew that my baby had been taken from me for my evil thoughts and actions. How could I live with the guilt. What use was I?

The police had questions. Where had I been? Where had ‘he’ been? And then later, the doctors with their diagnosis of SIDS, what is SIDS, I had never heard of SIDS. No one could even explain to me what SIDS was.
The next few days were a disturbing jumble of grief, guilt and trying to remember why I shouldn’t step in front of a passing truck. Would I ever stop feeling numb? Would I ever have a purpose again? His family took over and in their odd unfeeling way, tried to take care of things.

I arrived at the viewing and saw the fruits of their labor. The room was baby blue with gold gilding. The flowers were beautiful and so were ‘his’ sisters in their lovely gowns. My baby was in a small white coffin with blue velvet blankets and white silk embroidered pajamas that I didn’t recognize. Posed in the coffin was a pristine white teddy bear which I had never seen. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered where the baby's ‘Teddy’ was. ‘His’ whole family stood around the coffin posing for pictures with the baby, laughing and carrying on as if they were at a summer family reunion. I longed to lift him from his poorly staged eternal prison and disappear out a side door, but instead I staggered outside, arms empty, weeping and realized that it was raining.

The next day we woke in the morning and prepared to go to the cemetery. I was still numb, my mind couldn’t seem to focus anymore. I didn’t know if I would ever feel purpose again. The sun was shining and I heard the lonely sound of a morning dove in the distance. “This is so unfair,” I thought, “that this day should be so beautiful”.

As I walked through rows and rows of silent graves, decorated with small white crosses and protected by a large marble angel whose wings were spread wide, in the green shaded space that would be my child’s eternal resting place I saw the sky begin to darken. I was holding a small rose bud. ‘They’ had wanted me to lay the rose bud on the tiny casket that held my baby before they lowered it into the ground forever. I didn’t think that I would be able to let go of that rose bud. And, I didn’t know how I could ever say good bye. Then, suddenly, I saw the face of my older son looking expectantly at me. “Mommy, are you ok? They wouldn’t let me come see you. I cried and cried, but they wouldn’t let me come. Can I come with you now?”

Standing with my son, tears mixing with the rain that drummed against the tiny white casket, my heart softened. I looked at the small warm hand in mine and knew that we would be ok, my purpose for this moment, clear.


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Publication Date: 09-27-2009

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