A Baby Knows No Sadness

Sometimes life is so unfair it is almost unbearable.

My uncle died today, after suffering from a brain aneurysm a week ago. It was sudden, so sudden my head is still reeling from it, and I can't even begin to grasp the unfairness of it all.

I am heartbroken for my Grandmother, my Mom and my other uncle--how do you cope with the loss of son and brother? I am heartbroken for his friends, for my husband, and for myself--what do you do when your "go-to" guy for everything suddenly leaves? But most of all, I am heartbroken for my child. My Uncle was so excited when I got pregnant, following this blog religiously and keeping up with every change. Every time he went out, he came home with something for the baby: a bouncing tigger, a train tent, a giant 6 foot dragon....and all these arrived before I was even showing. Since my Dad, who passed away in 2008, couldn't be here, he took it upon himself to be the Grandpa my son didn't have from my side of the family. He was full of things he was going to do with him.

And now my son won't know him. And that is the most unfair part of all of this.

Luckily, Little Man has a PaPaw, his grandfather on Husband's side, who loves him more than I can fathom. If my little boy is only going to get one grandpa, I couldn't ask for a better man for the job.

Dealing with the past week and the decisions we had to make has been a different experience for me because of Little Man. Grief has not been able to take me over, there has been no chance to fall apart. There has been a happy Little Man who doesn't realize a part of our world is crumbling, who still wants to play and has to be fed on time and rocked to sleep and snuggled. Our Little Man didn't know he was supposed to be sad when we all gathered in the ICU waiting room--all he knew is that his entire family was there, along with a dozen other people, all of whom found him charming and sweet. To him it was a party, and he was happy to see everyone and he made all his noises and did all his tricks and made all of us smile even though we felt like crying.

A baby knows no sadness, and that is the true blessing of an otherwise horrible situation.