Tishri

Dear Harper,

The bushes we planted for you are dying, and I've run out of ways to care for them. So I watch the leaves wilt, and turn brown, and hope they will be renewed when spring comes. I'm sorry, little one. I feel this is another way in which I failed you.

We visited your grandma this weekend and as we drove in the car, she pointed out sights and scenes to keep Shea entertained. "What are they building?" he asked. "A new hospital," she told him.

Apparently Shea has triggers, too. "Our baby died," he told my mom.

Rosh Hanshanah begins tomorrow. The 5 month anniversary of your death is the day after. Sweetness and family, loss and sorrow. Already the week has begun with the news of another baby dying, the family member of a dear friend, and my heart breaks to know that someone else has to join the ranks of those who have lost a child.

Rosh Hashanah is a time to look back at the mistakes of the previous year. Harper bean, I've been doing a lot of thinking about genetics lately, trying to root for the 75% chance of having a healthy, SLOS-free child. And I'm finding it makes me feel tremendously guilty. What if we waited another month? What if it wasn't that egg, that sperm, that embryo? You? Would I be worse off for not having known you? Or better for it, up nursing rather than sitting in the oppressive silence of our sleeping house?

(Every time my mind goes down these lines about the wrong egg and wrong sperm, it makes me think of the scene from the movie, Contagion, "Somewhere in the world, the wrong pig met up with the wrong bat." Great line. Makes me chuckle a little.)

"She was beautiful," a friend recently told me about you.

My beautiful baby girl.

What would life had been like if we'd waited another month? What if we choose wrong again?

What do I do if the azaleas die? Can you just plant new ones as if the bushes themselves don't matter?

How can I stop failing you?

Wishing you were here to celebrate the New Year, bean. L'shanah tovah.