Dear Angel Baby,

Happy Birthday!  It's the big 2-7.  Wow!  Today has been a gloomy day.  I don't mean the weather.  It was actually quite sunny but cool.  My mood has been gloomy today.  I've got a lot on my mind.  I'm depressed and worried about a lot of things.  I'm not working right now so there's worry about money and finding a new job and all the adjusting that comes with it.  Learning a new job.  Learning the people and their functions and personalities.  Writing a new book and hoping to write another book this year.  I'm sorry to dump on you.  I should quit worrying and count my blessings and have faith all will be ok because in the end, I know it will be.

The word that keeps coming to my mind is TIME.  TIME has gone by so darn quickly.  I can't believe it's been 27 years today since you were born.  It was a Thursday. This TIME that day 27 years ago I was probably asleep.  After I had delivered you and was taken to my room, I later started running a fever that concerned the doctor because of a risk of infection.  I slept a lot that night. It broke overnight-Thank God-and I went home the next day, which was a Friday.  When I woke up that morning, I turned on my right side and stared out my hospital room at downtown Dallas.  I don't even know what I was looking at.  I just know it was Dallas, and it was downtown.  After I was discharged from the hospital, Daddy drove me home to Mammaw and Pappaw's house, and Granny followed to visit.  The weekend was a blur.  I felt like a zombie just going through the motions.  I stayed in my gown and housecoat.  I kept trying to figure out which classes I was going to take the next semester at school. I'm assuming I ate but have no recollection of eating.  How did everything go so badly so quickly?  I still don't know.  Could I/we still have children?  Of course, we did, and now they're adults!  Your sister is in her third year of teaching, and your brother is in his senior year in college as a Math major.  Again, where did the TIME go???

I keep thinking back to that day.  I had to be at the hospital at a certain TIME.  They started my Pitocin drip at a certain TIME.  I got my epidural at a certain TIME.  I was examined every 15 minutes.  TIME had to be monitored for everything.  You made your entrance at a certain TIME.  3:00 PM.  I so wish on that day I had taken the TIME for several things instead of zoning out and trying to pretend the horror of losing you and then having to deliver your dead body wasn't really happening.  But it was.  I lost myself in Popeye cartoons until it was all over and then moved to my stark room on the 7th floor.  Fear dictated my actions that day, and I let it.  I now wish I had taken the TIME to hold you in my arms no matter how unbearably hard it was.  I wish I had taken the TIME to cry, to scream, to weep, to grieve.  I wish I had taken the TIME to take pictures, even family pictures, no matter how heartbroken we were so I could have something to remember you by other than a very small, doll-sized set of footprints.  I wish I had taken the TIME to hold you close to my chest and take in your scent.  I wish I had taken the TIME to hold your little hands in mine and count every little finger.  I wish I had taken the TIME to hold those tiny feet, the same ones that used to kick me and cause those sweet little flutters, letting me know there was life growing inside me.  I wish I had taken the TIME to take in all your features and trace them with my finger.  I wish I had taken the TIME to give your life, however short it was, some dignity.  I wish I had taken the TIME to be your mother if only for a few minutes.  Perhaps even sing you a lullaby while I rocked you.  I wish we could have had more TIME together.  I wish I had taken the TIME to say "goodbye".  I chose not to see you because I knew at some TIME I'd have to give you up and let you go.  At the TIME I just couldn't bear to do it, but now...Now I wish I had taken the TIME. 

Well, those are my thoughts for today.  I think about you all the TIME.  There's that word again.  I know there will come a TIME that we get to meet again.  Until then...same TIME, next year, dear boy.

Love,
Mom