It is mid-afternoon, one week after my son went to heaven.  I lay in bed. I cry. I am angry.  I am a lost soul.  My tears soak my pillow. I cannot face the world.  My future seems to have taken flight to heaven with my little boy.

My life doesn’t seem real.  This is a bad dream. I am convinced that if I cry hard enough and long enough, God will see my pain. Then I will walk to my son’s room, look in his crib and there he will lay, sleeping peacefully … alive.

When I was pregnant, I used to tease my husband about what our child would be when he grew up.  My husband he was convinced that his son was going to hunt and fish and play football.  I would tell him over and over, “Our son, he is going to be in ballet.” To this, my husband would reply, “No, he is going to play football and basketball.”

I enjoyed teasing him about this to tell you the truth.  So over and over, I told him, “Our son would be in ballet.”

That afternoon, while I was laying in bed, tears soaking my pillow, my husband came in the room and this is what happened… My head was buried in my pillow. He came in the room and lay tenderly next to me.  He put his arm around me. We cried. Then he said one sentence that changed  me forever.

He whispered in my ear, “ It would have been okay if he were in ballet.”

At that moment, I realized he was more correct than anything in this world.  Nothing else would have mattered if our son had had a chance at life.  A life of being whatever he wanted to be, doing whatever he wanted to do.  All that would have mattered would have been that he was alive.