👶 TREE 621: JG – babies

Heads up: this post talks about the death of a baby. If you don’t want to read today’s post, that’s totally OK. But please do close your eyes and scroll down to the end where there’s an important note about next week.

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The thing about deciding to have kids and not succeeding for a while is that there is a lot of sex in between the monthly crushing disappointment. After several months of both, while we were in Hong Kong, an elderly Filipina woman told Christine: by this time next year you will have a baby.

She was right.

Whether you explain this as a coincidence or a message from God, how many people do you know who have had a prophecy from a mystical old woman while travelling far from home?

Our oldest son has always gone after more. The first time he pulled himself up to standing, we cheered. He fussed because he couldn’t get any higher. He’s 25 now and a wild land firefighter in Northern California. He’s still trying to go higher. If he’s not at work or with his girlfriend, he’s climbing a cliff, sometimes a real one, sometimes in the gym. We’re still cheering proudly.

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Ou second son was named Teifion Llewelyn Rhys Gill. Teifion is an uncommon Welsh name that means anvil. He died a couple days before his birthday.

Teifion came along too soon after our first son. We weren't ready for another child. Christine was still dealing with post-natal depression. But we decided he was a gift and began to be excited about him. We discovered that he had stuff wrong with him after Christine's second ultrasound scan. His brain didn't develop right. Neither did his circulatory system. It was a big messy web. He had a cleft palate.

The doctor told us after the autopsy that it was one of those things that happens by chance to one in every 10,000 people.

We were unlucky.

Shit happens.

Except it wasn't supposed to happen like that to us. I am the son of a pastor. I was a youth pastor. I was in a church that taught that God heals people. I believed that God was working actively in my life to make awesomeness happen. And why not? My life was radically dedicated to God. If anyone was a candidate to have their kid get a miracle healing it was me. That’s what the big-name and the little-name preachers taught me. That is what Christine and I and our whole church were praying for.

We got no miracle.

We got reasons. Reasons why it didn't work out this time are a lot easier than questioning your beliefs. When it isn't your kid who is dead, it is seems quite easy to come up with reasons and move on. That’s what the people around us did. Christine and I did not move on so well. Her world fell apart instantly. Mine was dismantled slowly over the next twelve years.

Before Rebecca Taylor was awesome as Self Esteem, she was awesome in Slow Club. I love this song. It’s sad and broken but not broken forever. There’s resilience in the music.

Next week, I have an important personal piece of writing that I must to do. I also need to prepare for next Friday. I’ll be at Elmfield School for Deaf Children doing a workshop based on my book The Boy Who Fell to Bits. (There’s more than one way to write about your own life.) Unfortunately, this means I’m going to have to take the week off TREE. I wish I had planned better and gotten a guest author for next week. I didn’t. I’m very sorry.

Grow slowly
Jeff