It's a Boy

It's A Boy
Jameson is Born
July 6, 1998
Philadelphia, PA

“It’s a boy.  We had a boy. Jameson was born this afternoon”’, Brian tells me with great delight.  But his telephone call fills me with deep sadness.  Brian, my younger brother by 15 years, just had his first child.  In his excitement, he called me first to tell me his wonderful news.  I am filled with so much emotion that I hold back tears as we talk for a few minutes.  He hangs up quickly because he wants to call the others.  I hang up the phone and cry.

It is July 1998, just two months since our mother’s death.  She died during Mother’s Day weekend.  A few days prior, in her hospital bed, she directed me to buy Cindy, Brian’s wife, a Mother’s day gift.

“Here Cindy, my first and last Mothers’ Day gift.  You will make a wonderful mother”, she tells Cindy.  “I wanted to give this to you just in case I didn’t make it until Mother’s Day”.  She laughs to cut the sadness in the room.  We laugh along but not because her statement is funny.  We are just exhausted with emotions.

She doesn’t make it to Mother’s day.  She dies two days later.  Now it is two months after her death and her baby son has just become a father. In a perfect world, Brian would have called his mother first. They should have had a moment of deep joy, of tears and hope and love.  But that didn’t happen.

Instead, he called me, his sister who could barely speak because my heart is so, so heavy. I am filled with so much sadness because this little brother, this little boy doesn’t have a mother.  At 27 years old, Brian should have a mother.  But he doesn’t and that just doesn’t seem fair to me.  He doesn’t have a mother. And now his son doesn’t have a grandmother.  And this harsh reality of life hits me too hard at this moment.  My heart is broken.