The empty chair

My toddler cried out for me from his bed tonight. Half asleep and still whimpering about a dream he had, I began to run my fingers through his crazy hair. I scooped him and his footed fleece pajamas up, and sat down to rock. 

And then I remembered it. Something I thought I had forgotten about.... 

Nearly 4 years ago, while holding him in the NICU, I used to steal moments when I thought the nurse was busy with her charting and wasn’t looking through the glass, to close my eyes (something that would normally result in a check in to make sure you weren’t falling asleep).

I would pretend we were home.

Just to see what it might feel like-

to hold my baby

alone

peacefully

on my own terms

in my own home

in the chair that my mother bought for me

The one that was assembled and beautifully placed in the empty nursery back at our house. The house I returned to, without my baby in my arms, everyday for over 3 months. What would it feel like to freely rock without the broviak line tugging at his delicate chest, or the TPN pump ferociously beeping because the infusion was complete, or chaotic alarms because something wasn’t right and a nurse rushed over. What would it be like? Just for a few seconds I could imagine what it would feel like to not be in that place. To not have a sick baby. To feel like a real mom. To let go. To exhale. For it all to be ok.

As I sat there and rocked, with my now giant toddler barely fitting in my arms, I remembered all of it. How hard and desperate those moments were. And I was just so grateful to be there with him tonight. Alone, in the dark of his peaceful room, lit not by hospital overhead lights, but by an oversized star shaped nightlight, and the only sound was that of “rain” from a sound machine we still haven’t grown out of. I wept right there, gently and quietly, in that chair, holding my boy. 

Would I have ever been so grateful for mundane moments like that one, had I not been nearly destroyed by the fear that I might never get them? There is beauty in even the ugliest of experiences. It trickles in sometimes long after, and when it does, you can’t possibly miss it. It’s glorious.

There will be life after the NICU.

It is so hard.

But in all the hard, are a thousand opportunities to be grateful.