I have several unwritten prompts sitting in my inbox, but I don’t find myself drawn to any of them right now. Instead I find myself thinking about the fact that tomorrow is father’s day in the US. It is (was supposed to be?) my first father’s day as father. I don’t know what to do about it. I’m supposed to be getting a silly card that Sara signed in George’s name, and maybe a nice framed picture of George & I together, or my first “Dad” coffee mug… but that isn’t how tomorrow is going to go.
As a bereaved father, especially a bereaved father whose only child died before birth, I don’t really feel like there’s a place for me out there tomorrow. I haven’t done 99% of the things that most dads have gotten to do. Does that make me less of a father? I never heard George’s cry, or fed him, or burped him, or changed his diaper. I never even read a book to him – he was just getting to the stage of development where we were going to start doing that, reading to him in my tummy. So many things I didn’t get to do, and won’t get to do as I continue marking the passage of time since George’s delivery, and the alternate timeline of how old he should be, had he been delivered full term & survived.
I don’t know. I feel like I’m still just taking things a day at a time, riding the waves of my grief. I do know that I hurt, so much. I held my child – I got to see his cute button nose, and his perfect little fingers and toes. Our time together may have been short, but I love him so deeply and feel his absence so acutely. The cells of my body don’t understand why the child it grew (even if only for 20 weeks) isn’t here with me.
Our father’s day celebrations, cards, are about what comes after birth – about spending time with our children, teaching them skills and lessons that they can take with them as they grow up and become adults. I don’t have that opportunity with George. His story ended with his birth, but they don’t make father’s day cards for that. Father’s day cards can be sappy and tug at the heartstrings, but George’s story is too sad – father’s day isn’t supposed to be sad.
If Sara were here, we would probably do something together tomorrow, something quiet. We would shed some tears together, acknowledge the unfair absence of our son from this world on a day when my fatherhood is supposed to be celebrated. But… it’s just me. I don’t know what to do about it. So I guess I’ll just see where the day takes me, feel what I need to feel.
I won’t have a “happy” father’s day… but I hope I can at least have a peaceful one.