Five years from now seems like an eternity away. Cana will be 15! Judah 13, Eden 11, Simone 8, Nadia 6, and Baby 4!! Cana will have her driving permit, and Judah will be a teenager! I will be married for almost 17 years...SEVENTEEN years! My dad will be 60. I will be closer to 40 than 30. It makes my brain quake to even think about it. Yet, I know how fast time flies. Five years AGO seems like just yesterday. Five years ago was the day that my son, Levi, died in my womb...forever changing my views on life, God, family, childbirth...you name it. The anticipation that comes with having a baby is almost unbearable at times--at least it is to me. All the planning, the imagining, the excitment of looking at the baby for the first time. Its all just magical. As unbearable as the anticipation of the baby's birth is, all the more unbearable is the loss of a life before birth could ever be. In a heartbeat, the anticipation turns to grief, and its a situation totally out of one's control Five years may be plenty of time for the pain to become less acute and more like a dull ache, but even a lifetime of years couldn't make me forget. I distinctly remember the smallest details of the night of January 26, 2005...the moment there was no heartbeat, telling Dustin, calling my mom, what I was wearing, the drive to the hospital, the smells and sounds, the faces of the doctors and nurses, the decor of my hospital room, the taste of my toothpaste and color of my toothbrush. In the days following, the memories are a little more blurred as the pain of realizing what I had lost consumed me. That day...five years ago...seems like yesterday. Yet, time has not stopped. I am more in love with my husband than ever before. My children have grown. More children have been added to our family. Grandparents have died. Friends have come and gone. We have settled here in West Virginia. God is faithful, and we are blessed. What choice to we have but to take each day as it comes? We don't forget yesterday, but we move forward into tomorrow. Time just doesn't stop. Today I remember again what will never be forgotten...the short life of Levi Abbott Turner. Because of his life and his much too early death, I am who I am today. Life is precious and hope is a powerful force.
Dustin wrote a poem a few days after I arrived home from the hospital five years ago. It has remained my favorite poem of all time even though he has written many since. What I love about it is how it ends...with the hopeful expectation of things to come.
The Vases
2.12.05
dedicated to my wife
in memory of my son, levi
Windows freshly washed--no streaks
Smell of cleaner fills the room cascading over couches
She bends to place the sympathy flowers away
In view of passers-by who will never notice
Traffic that ignores the cries from inside
They drive by unaware
That through the window tears still fall
Hearts still mourn
Pedestrians on powerwalks offer up prayers
Bathing the roof with rain of requests of heaven
She bears the scar of an empty homecoming
In her arms the condolences of withering flowers
Instead of her son she aches to hold
Momentos call from the grave that
Bears no stone, holds no flowers, bids no visitors
Still she buries her flowers
With bending stems, dried leaves, and remnants of tears
And the missing is like the ache of an empty stomach
She feels him again though his body no longer dwells in hers
Phantom kicks haunt her belly and stalk her frame
Calling from places that humans call celestial
The father watching from the kitchen
Hears his heart break for her again
The vases that held the flowers are empty
Like her womb where life has died
Cut from their homes in the ground
So cut was the son his Father now holds
The vases will hold life again
Her womb will hold life again
The flesh was sliced and so it heals
But no medicine can heal the soul
So we cry the Maker of the flower, the vase, and the soul
For the ground to heal once more and
Bear life in its soil again
