The month before Lorenzo died, we—he and I—traveled home to California. We did laps in my mom’s pool. We had a picnic in my friend Emily’s backyard as her older daughter played on the swing set and her younger, just a baby then, peddled her legs in the air. We were outside because there would soon be a solar eclipse, and we didn’t want to miss something so special. But so much special was happening right there on earth, down on the blanket, as Emily’s baby kicked the air and my first baby kicked inside me.

I also had three baby showers. I know. Too soon. Too many. But I was innocent, remember? I lived abroad in Chile, and it was the best time for me to fly before the baby was born. Plus, most of the people I loved were in California; it felt right to celebrate with them. Looking back, I’m glad that we did. It means I have photos where I am pregnant and happy and surrounded by love for me and my boy. It’s taken a long time to be able to look at them as I do now.

At the airport back in Santiago, I got pulled aside while my luggage was inspected. I had so many new baby clothes and toys that I might have been illegally importing them to resell in Chile (the same clothes are double the price there). But I pointed to my belly, and said, See? I am five months pregnant. Almost six.

Estoy embarazada. 

Over that next weekend, I washed all those clothes and put them away in what would be Lorenzo’s closet.

On Monday, we learned about his heart.

On Saturday, I delivered him stillborn.

“In the days and weeks and months that followed, I told these details over and over to anyone who would listen. Repeating them made the story, which seemed unbelievable still, real. It was as if by repeating the details I could somehow understand them, understand what had happened…”

—Ann Hood, COMFORT

Back home, I closed the door to that room that was becoming his nursery. Over time, I opened that door and then the closet doors and went through all of his things, folding and refolding, organizing and re-organizing—nesting gone haywire. My hope was that another baby of ours would wear them one day. A couple of months later, I urgently remembered that there was a “Born in 2012” onesie amongst his things. My cousin Ginger had had a baby boy in May, while I was home. My mom and I had held him at the hospital. Ginger and I had reveled in becoming mothers the same year. But I wouldn’t be. I was certainly a mother, but, as I’ve written, not in the way anyone dreams about. So I mailed her the onesie. I felt that someone—some boy—had to wear it while it was still his year. It probably no longer fit, but Ginger told me it did.

So began a tradition of sorts, a way of honoring. When a friend has a boy, I often send along an item or two of Lorenzo’s washed, unworn clothing: an outfit, a hat, a bib, a blanket. I wasn’t sure how their mothers, my friends, would respond. Even though this act of sharing and passing along is one of the most traditional things to do among mothers. But the response has been beautiful. So far, I’ve sent his things to babies in California, Missouri, Wyoming, Connecticut, Washington D.C., and Canada. While we were still in Santiago, I gave several to a friend adopting two boys from the DRC. She took some of the clothing to the orphanage there—Lorenzo’s reach continues to astound me.

Each time a boy is born, it gives me an opportunity to go through his things, to unfold and refold. I try to find something that represents the family I’m sending to… a pup, a sentiment about mommy or daddy. It is incredibly hard to let go. Sometimes, I can’t. I go through everything and can’t find a single item I’m ready to part with. It might change the next day; it might not. But once I do, I haven’t regretted it.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to let them all go even though I know now—nearly and gratefully six months along with another daughter—that it’s unlikely that we will have another boy. It’s another moment of convergence, as it was when I told you all we were expecting H. Again, it’s the same week of the pregnancy that we found out about Lorenzo’s heart, but this time we already know her heart is whole, that she is hopefully just as healthy as her big sister, whose outgrown clothes I have already sorted for her. Lorenzo has two little sisters now—WOW.

So why do I think I’ll still save the clothes? Because you have very little to hold on to after a baby dies. Because they were given with love to him, and when I can, I pass some of them on with that same love. Maybe my daughters will have sons who can wear their uncle’s vintage duds. Who ever really knows? For now, here are a few pictures of the healthy baby boys who have breathed life and joy into Lorenzo’s things. Clockwise from top left, please meet Fletcher, Parker, James, and Cormac.

      

H. has, too. Here she is in one of her brother’s outfits, passed along from Emily, on a blanket made from the fabric I bought in a Santiago barrio to decorate his room. Most of those toys were meant for him as well. How on my knees with gratitude I am that she has given them life, that she has breathed such joy into our hearts and homes (three now since she’s been born).

So, yes, I am still going over the details. I trust that many of you still listening also know why. Three-and-a-half years later, I am writing about Lorenzo’s baby showers.

“Writing about Grace, losing her, loving her, anything at all, is not linear either. Readers want a writer to be able to connect the dots. But these dots don’t connect. One day I think about how knitting saved my life, and I write about that. But how do I connect it to other parts of my grief? Grief doesn’t have a plot. It isn’t smooth. There is no beginning and middle and end.”

—Ann Hood, COMFORT

Comfort may be the most beautiful book I’ve read on the grief of losing a child. Like it’s taken me all this time to go through these photos, I sat down with the book recently. I had to find it now, I think, all these disconnected dots of my own later, to see how true that really is. To me, however, their very telling allows me to connect—to my son, to you, to my daughter sitting on my lap and drawing as I type, to my other daughter inside, kicking.