Happy Heavenly Birthday, Zakhur

 

Dear Zakhur,

I don't know exactly what year you were born.

I wish I did.

For years, that has bothered me. I've felt guilty that I couldn't put a date beside your name, as though not remembering the year somehow meant I had forgotten you.

But I haven't forgotten you.

I couldn't forget you.

The time when you were growing inside me was a terrible and confusing time in my life. There was so much abuse, so much fear, and so much happening that many of those years have blurred together in my memory. I've lost track of dates and details that I wish I could remember.

But you were different.

I remember that I was farther along with you. I remember that you were born during Rosh Hashanah. 

I remember losing you.

And I remember wanting you.

That's something I want you to know more than anything.

I wanted you.

I loved you.

I remember being put under for the procedure and not being allowed to see you or hold you afterward. That is one of the things that has stayed with me all these years.

Sometimes I wonder what you looked like -- did you have my naturally curly hair? Sometimes I wonder whether you were a boy or a girl, what your laugh would have sounded like, what you would have loved, and what kind of person you would have become.

For a long time, I carried around all the positive pregnancy tests I had ever had in a little Ziploc bag in my purse. There were nine of them. (You have 2 brothers and one sister who made it out alive). The tests didn't have dates on them, but I couldn't bear to throw them away.

Eventually, I did.

I told myself I couldn't keep holding onto the past forever. But throwing those tests away didn't mean I stopped loving the babies they represented.

And it certainly didn't mean I stopped loving you.

There was something else I carried for a very long time ... guilt ...

Not long after I lost you, I read a story about a woman overseas who had somehow carried a baby to term outside her uterus. I remember thinking, if she could do that, maybe I should have tried something like that for you.

I've wondered about that for years.

I've wondered whether there was something more I could have done. Whether someone could have saved you. Whether I should have fought harder.

And once, when I was looking for advice, I called a Christian radio station anonymously and asked what I should do. The announcer told me that if I went through with the surgery, it would be the same as having an abortion—that it was murder.

Those words stayed with me for years.

But I'm beginning to understand something now.

I didn't murder you.

I didn't stop loving you.

I was a woman living through an unimaginably difficult time, and I lost my baby.

I wish I could go back and tell that younger version of me that she didn't have to carry that guilt. I wish I could tell her that loving her baby mattered.

Because I loved you.

I loved all my babies.

And sometimes I wonder if perhaps God, in His mercy, took some of you to a place where you would never have to experience the things my other children eventually experienced in that home.

I don't know if that's why.

I can't know God's reasons.

But I can entrust you to Him.

And now, after all these years, you have something you didn't have before.

You have a name.

Zakhur. זָכוּר

It means "Remember" in Hebrew. 

I don't know your exact birthday.

I don't know the exact year.

I don't know whether you were my son or my daughter.

But I know you were here.

I know you were mine.

I know you were loved.

And I know I remember you.

So this year, on Rosh Hashanah comes, I'm lighting a candle for you.

Not because I am trying to hold onto the pain forever.

But because I don't want you to feel forgotten.

You aren't forgotten, Zakhur.

You never were.

Your mother remembers you.

And God remembers you.

All my love,
Mom