Today is a day of many emotions. 5 months ago I lost the most precious gift in my world. I have been asked to speak @ Fianna's healing garden at Renown. I was very nervous I wouldn't be able to speak without blubbering but I did ok. I was shaking from nerves. Here is my speech:
In anticipation for a new baby, many mothers start the "planning." Everything from our ideal gender, name, clothes, to profession WE think they should be as adults. Unfortunately, we are all here because we never got that far. Some of us lost babies before they were born, others like myself, got to hold our babies for a short time. My name is Jackie and I lost Austin 28 short days after he was born. He was my first child and my husbands first son. He was our precious baby that left us far too early.
As parents when anticipating our new child we dream big and hope for the best, but as parents here today our dreams were stolen by a horrible nightmare. We feel cheated, robbed and are left in disbelief that this child we planned our lives with is no longer here with us.
No one can ever know what we are feeling unless you have walked in our shoes. I feel that even losing a baby before he/she is born is different then losing my son after I got to spend the time I did with him. I got to know his smile, his cry and his smell. I often wonder would it hurt less if I didn't know these things? Then I picture the distraught mother who was jipped of that smile and smell.
The truth is we don't know why or how this could happen to any of us but this is the hand we have been dealt and now we must "adjust" I say this term loosely because I don't know that any of us move on, we learn to live without the child we so desperately wanted.
If you are here today with us then you have personally gone through our rough journey as a support person or know our pain. To that I say thank you, for supporting us and remembering our angel who left too early. If you have not personally had to deal with this loss but are a support system you need to know how important you are.
When we lost Austin the most common response we heard was "please let me know what I can do for you." Unfortunately in our time of grief we don't know what to think let alone how to function. The best gestures received were the people who just did things to make us feel better. Bringing us food so we didn't have to cook. Making our bed so we could just sit and cry. But the BEST therapy we could have been asked was to talk about our child. What was Austin like? How do you remember Austin?
To that I'm sure I would have broke down in tears, but I would have remembered the monkey hat he wore most of his life. I would have showed you the video of him watching the room with his eye while making an "O" with his lips. I would have told you our son wailed when he was upset and to us he was the most precious baby.
Our babies may have gone far earlier then time we wanted them too, but we are thankful you are here to remember them with us today. Thank you for letting me talk about our son, Austin Eugene Hawks who grew his wings 5 months ago on May 15, 2011 RIP <3 mom!
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