Silent Night

The drugs are taking her into sleep and preparing her body to eject two precious pathogens into our hands for a brief eternity and into our hearts for a long and fitful sleep.
I sit beside her trying to pray. It is easier now with sleep so close at hand than it will be in the months to come when so much that is now uncertain will resolve itself into a comfortable muddle. I will find that prayer is difficult in a comfortable muddle. This moment will fade into a comfortable muddle, but for now everything is clear and hard.

All is calm and dark.

Just nine months before, in the same setting, everything was hectic and bright, full of activity and joy and terror. Just under an hour of pushing and pain sent out a bloody mess of wonder who will make us forget the calm and dark in the weeks and months ahead. Her face nine months before turned inside out with pain. Now it is calm. The afternoon sun greeted our little joy then, but now it is dark.

We wait for our sons in the calm dark.

She is muttering some narcotic inanity that I should write down to tell her later. Laughter comes as a great surprise now, as do any number of the simple joys that will fill the weeks and months ahead. Who imagines eating and drinking after touching the sleep of death? Who can foresee the bright happinesses that will pop into the calm dark weeks and months like firecrackers.

These calm dark moments will recede into memory. They will nestle themselves into odd places, coming and going once or twice a day, God willing, forever. Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also…and so it will, though not usually with thrusts and parries, but rather with little pinpricks.

Tender and mild reminders that our sons have come and gone.

This calm dark night delivers them to us abruptly. She wakes briefly to hold them round about her before they are forever wrapped together in a swaddling shroud. She fades back into a comfortable muddle and I hold them, trying hard to pray. It is easier now with the sleep in hand. There is no resolution yet, just long and fitful sleep. This is alone certain. All else is soft and uncertain and liquid. Like the skin that covers their unripe bodies. Like the tears from the weeks and months to come.

Tender and mild reminders of the sleep that is to come. The sleep that pierces into our memories in odd places. The memory of two boys buried not far away, swaddled in earth and green. An odd place for my sons to be while I walk the green earth, with their memory buried in a brief eternity.

Asleep in heavenly peace.

My sons, my sons, would to God I might die for thee.