Remembering Jamie

Every now and then there’s a slightly awkward moment for people when my kids bring up their little brother Jamie. A look of confusion crosses people’s faces when it dawns on them that I don’t have a son named Jamie. And I think sometimes people feel like they’ve stumbled into an intimate family secret they weren’t prepared for, and don’t feel privy to. Kids do have the tendency to do that. But I don’t do secrets. We found out that we had lost Jamie just a couple weeks after announcing it to our immediate family, back in 2019. My kids knew, so hiding it or keeping it a secret simply wasn’t an option anyway. And I never wanted my kids to feel like our family had secrets we didn’t talk about, so I have never discouraged them from talking about it. At the time, I felt I had to find ways to memorialize the baby we had all lost. And give everyone closure, not just myself. 

Part of that was giving the baby a name. We didn’t even know the gender when we lost Jamie. Which is why we chose a name that was fairly gender-non-specific. But my kids have mostly decided for themselves that it was a boy, and I don’t feel the need to point out that we don’t really know. Obviously it was hardest the first few months when both my feelings and the children’s feelings frequently had to coexist. Abby frequently asked questions like “how many months will the baby spend in heaven?” And “when will Jamie get to come home?” And Adam, my very tender hearted little boy was pretty sad about it initially too. 

I decided to make a fairy garden in honor of Jamie. In my heart at the time, I imagined my kids playing with the garden and it would sort of symbolize playing with Jamie. A way for Jamie to be in our family. I put a copy of the ultrasound picture in an album of family photos that the kids sometimes look at during the first hour of church on Sundays. It just felt important to remember Jamie, and help my kids feel connected in some way. I wanted Jamie’s existence to feel real instead of something intangible and unreal. 

That fairy garden is in a very large pot and only recently made its way to our new home. And I have been feeling the need to tend to it, and add new plants. That might have to wait a while but still, I just wanted to say, that healing from trauma doesn’t mean forgetting it ever happened. Instead, healing from trauma is finding a way to move through the pain (and not skipping past it). Finding a way to interact with it despite the triggers, in a way that allows you to keep moving forward. And I find it often involves love. Perhaps primarily being able to find love for yourself. But also love for and from others, love from God, love with patience, love with the willingness to fumble.