Gifts of the son...

Gifts of the Son…
 The true secret of parenthood, the truth that is laid out in front of your face before you become a father, explained in detail as you await the birth of your first born, but never truly understood until it is experienced for oneself is that children are more than a gift.  They are Santa Claus.  They constantly and without fail grant you gifts, sometimes ones that were not on your list, but greater than anything you could even concoct after months of introspection and wishing.  
 I think of the gifts of my children, the gifts they have given to me.  I will work in reverse birth order since the last born usually gets the shaft when the issue of first experiences is discussed.  Mario, well he has taught me that some people become grandmasters of funk, and some people are born to it.  Given a choice between Vivaldi, Cat Stevens and Bootsy Collins, Mario will take the latter most without fail.  He has a little toy van that has a button that plays music.  His favorite is (as Lisette puts it) “the pimp music,” a sweet funk riff with wah-wah and classic drum rolls.  I can see him bumping along as he feels the flow.  Mario is an anomaly in our home, with his blond hair, his crinkly nose, fair features and penchant for the Mexican game tope (basically shouting "tope!" and then headbutting someone.  I always felt I could easily read my kids, their wants, their needs.  I don’t think it is the changes in me so much as that Mario is just hard to get.  He teaches me constantly that you cannot take anything for granted, even the needs and will of your children.  He has also given me the gift of laughter, an ability that I lived without for a long time.  When dealing with the death of a child and relatively soon afterward deciding to have another child, there is the worry in your heart that others (or secretly you as well) will perceive this new child as a replacement or a substitute.  You argue in your heart (sometimes unconvincingly) against this idea and you reassure yourself and your family vociferously that this is not an attempt to fill a void or erase the pain of your past.  However, somewhere in the quiet, you tell yourself in a small voice, “he is here because Liam is not.”  But, I will get back to that later.  Now, after we made the decision to create a new life, to bring hope and genesis (not Phil Collins) into our home, I inevitably came to peace with the decision.  As soon as my conflicted thoughts and guilt were resolved, I realized that the worst thing I could do was to every let Mario think that he was a second-string son, or a fill-in-the-blank.  I committed to not only refrain from comparing Mario to Liam in my mind, but to remind myself daily that Liam will forever be a small child in my mind.  He never had the opportunity to go through puberty and curse in my face and tell me he hates me or that I just don’t understand him.  Liam died in a state of grace and innocence that is untenable for anyone that makes it past their 5th birthday.  Mario’s last and greatest gift to me was the gift of letting go, not of my love or anguish over Liam, but of the guilt associated with his death.  Witnessing the (for lack of a more succinct or appropriate term) miracle of Mario’s conception and safe birth, I was reminded after so many years of suffering and loss that great things, powerful and positive things do happen.  They happen to all of us if we are aware enough to bear witness to them.  Mario brought me  a new perspective on my life, a refreshed and renewed opportunity to start looking at the glass as being half full again.  And he reminds me daily of the reasons I labor and endure.  His love, his smile, his excitement at seeing me and his need of my love is a gift.
 Sophia…she instructs me daily in the power of resilience. Sophia struggled through every bit of the loss of Liam and the compassion that one faces while witnessing someone you love slowly dying. She did not always understand the changes that were occurring, but she knew her best friend in the whole world was sick and then one day he was gone. She was young enough that we could have explained a lot away, tried to wash her brother from her memory to save her grief and confusion and horrific dreams of loss and death. Instead, we decided the greatest gift we could give her was to strengthen her connection to her brother, despite his absence. We have Sophia pray to Liam every night, asking for his aide in protecting our friends and family that are sick or worried. Sophia asks Liam to welcome the souls of our friends and family members that go to heaven and she believes he takes them by the hand and leads them to paradise. Sophia shows me daily that there is so much more living to do and that moving forward from tragedy is not the same as denying it or forgetting the past. Sophia grants me the gift of reassurance. I am constantly reassured that though life is fragile and our lives tenuous, not every child is destined to die and not every life will be snuffed out before it has a chance to reach its apex. Sophia reaffirms the assumption every parent that has not lost a child holds that the parent will protect the child and the child will outlive the parent. As she ages and she passes through her regular pediatric checkups without any sign of devastating disease or life-threatening illness, we are brought closer and closer to the blissful peace that allows a parent to enjoy parenthood and not simply be paralyzed with fear because our child hasn't been diagnosed "yet." Sophia brings us so many gifts, the gifts of humor and music and zaniness. She gives us the opportunity to offer advice on friends and relationships. She allows us the opportunity to assist as she navigates the minefield of social interactions that is school. Sophia also allows us to keep Liam "alive" in the fact that she speaks of him constantly and openly with her family and friends. Now she is older than Liam was when he passed away. She has taken the role of the older sibling and had to cede her position of "baby" sibling and all the comfort that entails. She has done a remarkable job and continues to amaze us in her ability and willingness to be a leader and take on the role of #1 helper. Sophia gives us the gifts of hugs as well.
Liam...Liam's gifts were always many. I dote on my little angel, and sometimes pine for the man he never had the opportunity to become. It can be maddening, thinking of all the experiences and accomplishments that we missed out on together. To stay on point, I recount the many gifts that Liam gave us. He shared with us his charisma, a charming child that had an infectious personality. He had an ability, of which these days I can only envy, to be able to disarm people with his smile and innocence, provide the perfect comment and inspire people with his greatness. Liam's second great gift to me was his courage. He was so small when he got sick. he hated the many many medical procedures, frequent spinal taps, surgeries, chemotherapy treatments, full body irradiation and a bone marrow transplant that required a long time in the hospital and a constant tax on his body. Throughout it all, Liam remained positive. Through nausea and roid-rage and neutropenia, he prevailed. When I would have laid down in my bed and cried, he got up, strapped on a surgical mask, wheeled his iv tree behind him and played dinosaur hunt in the hallway, his sword in hand. That kind of bravery is not something that one can readily ignore or forget. Liam gave me and Lisette so many lessons, the gift of knowledge, the gift of understanding that our love for one another was so powerful that it could overcome complete desolation. The knowledge that injustice occurs and sometimes there is nothing one can do other than pick up your tattered self and trudge onward with the hope of finding sunrise again, hope of finding solace. Liam taught us strength and his absence taught us the importance of that lesson. Finally, Liam gave us one last gift, perhaps a greater gift than any of us could repay, were we given the chance. After Sophia was born, I had a vasectomy. We were done. we had a life, a family, a plan; we were ready to start working toward building a strong and successful future for ourselves and our children. When Liam became ill, we put the plan on hold...we were in stasis. When he died, we were falling, in darkness. We made a decision that we were going to provide Sophia with a brother. We were going to do for her what Liam would want, a companion, a tether to happiness and the world. We would bring a new life into this world, with Liam's tacit assent, to bring wholeness back to our lives. So we sought the best medical help we could find and I underwent a reversal operation for my vasectomy. Now, I had heard that the operation was pretty iffy as far as success rates. The doctor assure me that since the vasectomy was less than 3 years old, I was under 35 years old and since we had successfully procreated in the past, the odds were actually pretty good, maybe 80%. So we went ahead with it. Almost immediately, Lisette got pregnant. She had a harrowing pregnancy with a subchorionic hemorrhage, and was bedridden for a large part of the pregnancy. At the end of the day, our little Mario was born, ten fingers, ten toes. He is a prince, so funny and so passionate. I have a thousand reasons to miss Liam and a thousand more to thank him, but in perhaps the most Christ-like act of his life, in his death, a passing from this world that he loved and cherished, he gave the gift of life to a brother he never met. I know that if the two of them had ever met, the first thing that Liam would have done would be to hand Mario a toy dinosaur to hide, and the first thing Mario would have done would be to run toward Liam and gleefully shout, "Tope!!!"