My Darling Sebby,

Happy Happy Third Birthday in heaven! May you have a wonderful time at the feet of our Father today.  If you could have lived, mommy would have made you a chocolate birthday cake perhaps in the shape of a train or a car…  How I wish you could have been here, so that I could celebrate your special day with you, and dote on you, and love you, the way I have always wanted to love you.  Wanted to look after you, and watch you scurry off to your kindergarten class. Except…. it isn’t happening. Somehow.

So much has happened in the past year.  So many different things.  September marks the half way point since your book Sebby – Son of Hope was released.  It has helped touch and impact many people. Some even have told me it has helped them to move on from their grief.  It has given them the courage to face grief head on rather than skirt around it.   When the book was released earlier this year, it gave me great joy.

Mommy often thinks of you, and wonders what life would have been like if you hadn’t died.  But when you died, all my dreams and hopes for a future that I had with you were buried too. And there wasn’t much I could do.  When an adult dies, they take with them their achievements to the grave.  People will miss them, but life moves on. When a child dies however, even, before birth, it is only the mother and father and immediate family who anticipate the child.  It is the mother who feels the child move around her womb, and it is the mother who sees and feels her body change.  When a child dies before birth, all the hopes and dreams we had with that child are buried.  No achievement would ever be recorded.  It becomes  a silent tragedy.  In many cultures today it is still a taboo subject. It is a topic shunned into darkness, and I want to change that.  Mothers should not be ashamed of having a child that was stillborn. It just happened.  It doesn’t mean that we are failures, it just means that for whatever reason you could not hold onto life the way I desperately pleaded with the Lord that night begging Him to give you life.

I remember how I would pray long through the night begging for you to live. But you didn’t. I am OK with it now.  I am just surprised at how fast and how quickly life has changed. One minute I was eagerly waiting for you to be born, and the next you were gone.

But I know this my darling Sebby, I am so very proud of being your mommy, I am so very proud of what you have helped me to achieve.  Out of the ashes beauty will arise.  And in  a way, out of your ashes beauty has risen. A book was created, i am able to help other parents go through their grief and point them to the cross.  Simply, because when you were within me, somehow you gently pointed me back to the cross, you showed me the way back to the unconditional love of our Father in heaven.  So, I will always be thankful to you for that.

I am never sure what to write to you in your birthday letters, never sure what to say. Has my life been meaningful? Have I lived my life this year as best as I could to honour you?  I have to admit that grief doesn’t come crashing into my life like it used to – it is more like the ebb and flow of an eventide twinkling past the dark night of my soul.  It comes, but it isn’t intense like it was in those early years after your death.  Where my every thought was consumed by only thoughts of you.  It has evened out a bit.  Sometimes though grief does catch me by surprise, then the anger comes and the bitter tears of regret.  Oh how I wish you could have been here, or oh how unfair all of this is.

But I know that you are in the best place in the world.  You don’t have to experience suffering like we do and that brings me great joy, great joy to my soul.

If love could have saved you, you would have lived forever.  You were a much loved child, you were a much longed for child.  You brought hope back to my broken family.  Everyone was eagerly anticipating you. I was. Babka and Bompa were. Your aunts and uncles were. Great Babka and Great Bompa were. Everyone wanted to meet you.  And when that didn’t happen, life just seemed to stop. And for a while it didn’t make sense…

The greatest gift all Sebby that you have given to not just me, to my immediate family, but to many people is HOPE.  Your story has brought hope to many broken people. Your story has brought courage to many people to move on from their grief.  You are and always will be my son of hope.  My precious baby.

My darling Sebby, I hope that you will have a good birthday.  I hope you will get to celebrate it with your sisters and cousin David and all your little friends.  And that you will get birthday cake in heaven. I am sorry that mommy can’t be there just now, but know that I am thinking of you, and honouring you today, on your special day.

I love you birthday boy.  I love you till the moon and back, and would do anything to have you back in my arms.

As always loving you from afar,

Your Mama
xxxxx