At five years old, my son knows death.
...not the kind where his hamster or 101 year old grandma died.
He knows the unexplainable, unimaginable, unfair death of his sibling- his baby sister.
At nearly three years old, he became a big brother to our second son, so he knew the drill well. Mom goes to the hospital. He comes to visit mom and the baby. Mom and Dad bring the baby home. Life changes.
To say he was excited to be a big brother again, specifically a big brother to a little sister, would be the understatement of the century. He would often rub and kiss my tummy, talk to his sister, and ask how many days were left before we would be bringing her home. I have to admit, the constant questions about how many days left quickly became bothersome… “97, 82, 65, I don’t know, son, one less than the number I said yesterday!”
Little did we know, the countdown was actually counting down to the worst day of our lives as a family. The day we would all stare death in the face closer than we ever had before.
The morning we delivered Harper, we knew our sweet boy would be walking through the door soon to meet his sister. He had no idea that she wouldn’t be breathing, have a heartbeat, or be coming home with us.
As he entered the room, his face lit up. He was thrilled to see his Mom and Dad, but his eyes were looking for his sister. We sat him up on the hospital bed and took a deep breath. Not only did we just deliver our deceased daughter into the world, but now we had to break the news to our first born. We had to crush his heart and somehow explain something that we were nowhere near understanding ourselves.
If it is true that there is no perfect manual on how to parent well, but if there were do you think there would be a chapter called How To Tell Your Child Their Baby Sibling Died? I bet not…
I started speaking and just prayed to Jesus that He would give me words to say, because the truth was I had none. I told him that sister had “gotten sick” in mama’s tummy and that she wasn’t alive anymore. I told him that her body was still here and that he could hold her, but that she couldn’t come home with us because she was dead. I told him that her body would have to be buried, but that her soul was in heaven with Jesus.
I would say that his reaction cut through our hearts like a dagger, but our hearts were already shattered. So instead, I will describe it as the shattered pieces of our hearts being set ablaze and turned to ash. Not only were we unable to “fix” this tragedy for ourselves as Harper’s parents, but we couldn’t “fix” it for our living child either. There was nothing we could say to make it better, so we just held him and cried.
Harper was brought in shortly, and we all got to hold her. Our son’s mood lightened as soon as he saw her. He held her and loved on her just as though she were alive. He kissed her, counted her fingers and toes, and lovingly rubbed her head. He didn't care that she was dead. She was his little sister and he loved her with that big-brotherly love that only he could give her.
In the days that followed, we didn’t get to see much of our sweet boy. His grandparents cared for him while we planned his sister’s funeral. This included late nights, meetings, and tons of driving. Our minds were on autopilot as planning her funeral was the absolute last thing we wanted to be doing, but we knew we needed to in order to honor our baby girl in the way she deserved. We knew we wouldn’t be planning her first birthday, graduation party, or wedding, so we were going to pour our whole selves into this funeral if it killed us.
On May 24, 2018, the evening before the funeral, we sat Hudson on our bed and did our best to explain what he would experience the next day. He of course had never been to a funeral before and had a lot of questions. Again, I just prayed Jesus would give me the words because I knew I wouldn’t have them. We explained that a funeral was a time for all of our friends and family to come together and remember/say goodbye to someone we loved. We told him that Harper would be in “her box” what he called her coffin, and that there would be prayers, songs, preaching, and probably plenty of crying during the funeral. We went on to explain how after the funeral, we would drive up to the cemetery with Harper’s box so that the men could bury it in the dirt.
I could see the wheels of his little mind turning, soaking in all of the information, but still unsure of how to process it all. He was concerned about Harper being in the dirt and not with us or in heaven with Jesus. This is when we again did our best to explain the difference between our souls and our flesh. We made sure he knew that Harper was already happy in heaven with Jesus and that her body was empty.
What happened next is one of the most beautiful things grown from the ashes of Harper’s death.
Hudson began asking more about heaven. He asked what it was like and if we could visit Harper in heaven. Honestly, he was pretty bummed that Harper was getting to experience the amazingness of heaven without him. We were able to explain to him that Mama and Dada would go to heaven when they died and that he could too- if he believed in God and asked Jesus to come and live inside of His heart.
And in that moment, surrounded by grief, heartache, physical pain of just delivering a baby, and exhaustion, Jesus entered our son’s heart. In that moment, it was strange to feel such deep pain while at the same time feeling gratitude. It was the beginnings of the sacred dance of grief and joy that we would soon come to know well. In the midst of that moment with our sweet boy, I could see God stirring the ashes from our shattered, burnt hearts in a way that only he could and I knew that we were going to survive this.
