Full Circle

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 12 January 2005 14:16:29

We were young, not married long, and with college to get through and two babies already; there were struggles.

By the time Lorelei came along, I had taken an job while we worked on getting the Spouse through school. It felt as if I gave birth to her, nursed her a while, then turned her over to her Daddy to raise between classes while I was away selling cars. Just getting to be with her was special; my memories of her infancy are fewer than for the first child or the later ones.

She was different-looking, too, taking after other segments of the bloodlines than all the rest of the kids. A peachfuzz of blonde hair on her little bald head, huge crystal-blue eyes. The personality and sense of fun was the same, but to look at her she made you think of a little silvery cuckoo dropped into a nest of shiny dark grackles.

We didn't have her long -- she drowned at age one. The horror of that and the loss and the active mourning do fade a bit and become manageable, but you always always miss a lost child. There's always a chick unaccounted for, not in the nest, you know?

Skip forward 21 years now...

A couple of times since his birth in September, I've gone to babysit my new grandson. My son and daughter-in-law don't get out much -- once it was a night of bowling, once it was the final concert of a friend's band.

The baby favors his mother a lot. Which just happens to mean he's got her huge periwinkle blue eyes, and a peachfuzz of fair hair on his cute little head.

So there I was, late at night, in his nursery/bedroom, having just upset him by waking him for a dose of medicine. Of course he cried a miserable "why did you wake me?" cry, poor baby. So I snuggled him into my arms, and laid his head down on my chest, and we rocked.

In the dim light coming from the hallway, I rocked. I looked at the portraits on the shelf of my son and his wife as young toddlers, and remembered my son as an infant. We decided to have him when we did because we would soon be leaving our student days behind; giving birth to him when we did meant that we qualified for lesser expenses at the state "charity" hospital.

And we did it then because it had been a couple of years since Lorelei died. We felt ready for another baby. Eldest son was the only strategically "planned" baby, heh.

So I sat in the cool dim light, and I rocked. I sang to the top of his sweet baby-scented head the little French songs I always sang to my babies.

Then after a bit, the late-night mind moving on autopilot among the songs I know, I launched into the hymns. Great swelling swooping church songs, over-dramatized a bit so that the glissando and staccato, the throb and the sigh, could draw his attention away from his tears and calm him.

Then came "No Tears In Heaven":

No tears in Heaven -- no sorrows given
All will be glory in that land
There'll be no sadness -- all will be gladness
When we shall join that happy band

And there'll be no tears in Heaven fair
No tears, no tears up there
Sorrow and pain will all have flown
There'll be no tears in Heaven fair
No tears, no tears up there
No tears in Heaven will be known

Glory is waiting -- waiting up yonder
Where we shall spend an endless day
There with our Savior -- we'll be forever
Where no more sorrow can dismay

And there'll be no tears in Heaven fair...

He was almost asleep, there in my arms against my chest, purring his little baby breaths.

"No Tears" I especially picked out to be sung at Lorelei's funeral. That and "Where The Soul Never Dies":

I'm on my way to that fair land where the soul of man never dies
Where there will be no parting hand, and the soul of man never dies
No sad farewells, no tear-dimmed eyes
Where all is peace and joy and love
And the soul of man never dies

A rose is waiting there for me where the soul of man never dies...

I kissed his fuzzy little head.

I bent my face down toward his and watched the last few blinks of his chinaberry blue eyes as he drifted off to sleep.

And I remembered Lorelei, the laughing little auntie he never knew. Yes, with a tear or two. But I was smiling.