Making Babies

I’m going to depart from my usual tone this time, to talk about making babies. Not physically, but emotionally. Bear with me here!

A baby I loved died recently, just a few weeks old, in the middle of the night, for no apparent reason. What do you say, what do you do, when this happens?

I still shudder when I remember the phone call I received years ago about another baby dying – I was in the supermarket, in the cereal aisle. These deaths send shockwaves through us, because babies are not meant to die, or, if they do, there should at least be a glaring, obvious cause, preferably written in Huge Capitals and displayed in Neon Lights above the baby’s head at all times so we know what is coming. But even then, we couldn’t prepare ourselves.

This led me to think about babies in general, and what they mean, and why God might send them here for such short visits. I am not typically religious, so this was an odd departure for me.

This is what I think. When humans make babies, there is, by necessity, a coming together of two people. In a perfect world these would be two people who are committed to each other, in love, and able to provide a stable happy home, and want babies.

This is seldom the reality, but I believe that in nearly all instances the two people are searching for something better. They are coming together for warmth, comfort, hope, togetherness, a feeling of belonging, being wanted, being needed. So the babies that we make are embodiments of all of these qualities, are evidence of our humanity, are the ties that bind us to this earth.

They say the babies you don’t plan are the ones God plans. I believe this little baby had a purpose in life. Perhaps I have to think this way and believe these things in order for life to be livable. I’m not sure. This is all conjecture!

How do parents say goodbye to their children? I am thankful that I have never had to. Perhaps they never do. I know my grandfather, at 94, still cries on the anniversary of my uncle’s death, so many, many years ago. Perhaps these children live on in our hearts, and with them, the people we made these children with.

Rest in Peace, little angel – Catherine Anne Rose Jeynes.