By Megan Wehman, Mental Wellness Provider
“I think of falling snow when I think of you.”
I anticipated your arrival like a hopeful child waiting at the window, filled with wonder and awe. I wondered how special and unique you would be to me. I imagined reveling in your arrival, spending as much time as I could gazing at your beauty, thinking, How special am I to get to be here for this?
Then, like the silent drift of fluffy snowflakes, you came.
You were here, and I was so grateful, so amazed. I didn't want to waste a single moment. Your arrival was a thing of heaven, and for the shortest of times, I felt so blessed to be there for you.
But the snow stopped.
For a moment, the world held its breath, waiting for more of you. But soon, it kept breathing.
But I didn't.
I sat there among the snow-dusted ground, unable to believe it was over. I'd look to the sky and think I was sure I saw a flake. I was sure you weren't finished falling. Surely there would be more. Surely the sky wasn't done giving.
I waited.
Everyone around me began living. They went about their days, moving around me in my waiting. Life continued in all its ordinary ways, as though the world had not just witnessed something extraordinary. And slowly, the world forgot that the snow had even fallen.
But I knew.
I still didn't move. I still looked to the sky. I still braced against the frozen ground, as if I could hold you here with me.”
I think this is one of the loneliest parts of losing a baby. The world keeps turning. The mornings come. People make plans, laugh, work, and carry on. The days begin to look like the days that came before. And somewhere in the middle of all that ordinary living, you are left holding the memory of something the world may never fully understand.
You remember.
You remember the waiting. The pictures in your head. The dreams that began taking shape before you ever held your baby in your arms. You remember the moment they arrived, and how your heart seemed to make room for a love you never could have imagined before.
And you remember when the falling snow stopped.
There is a particular kind of grief in losing a child. It’s grief for the person you were before the loss, and it’s the grief for the child you would have held. It’s the heartache of loving someone whose story feels as though it ended before it had the chance to begin. It’s learning to carry a love that has nowhere tangible to exist, while the rest of the world carries on as if nothing has changed.
But something has changed.
You changed.
And even when others can no longer see the snow, you remember how it looked as it fell. You remember how the world seemed softer beneath it, how everything grew quiet, how you stood in wonder at something so delicate and beautiful. You remember what it felt like to be there, to witness it, to be the one who knew it was happening.
Perhaps that is what I want people to understand about child/infant loss: just because the falling was brief doesn't mean it was insignificant. Just because the world moved on doesn't mean you have to. And just because a life was short doesn't mean that the life has been forgotten.
Some babies leave footprints that the world never gets to see. They leave no lifetime of photographs, no first day of school, no birthdays celebrated year after year. But they leave something just as real. They leave a place in our hearts that belongs only to us.
I don't know how long I will stand here looking at the sky. I don't know when this frozen ground will feel less cold beneath me, or when I will learn that moving forward does not have to mean I'm leaving you behind.
Maybe healing isn't about forgetting the snow.
Maybe it isn't about pretending the falling never happened or forcing myself to stop looking toward the sky.
That I can embrace the beauty of your arrival without being broken by the silence of your absence. That I can make room for the world to keep breathing while I learn, slowly and imperfectly, to breathe again.
For now, I remember. And even if the world has forgotten that the snow fell, I haven't.