Fourth Birthday

You never stop being a mother. Not a day has gone by that I have not thought about my firstborn and ached to hold her. I am still Isabella’s mother; the amount of time she was on earth does not change that fact, just the expression of it.

Today is her fourth birthday. Sometimes I struggle with the semantics of a simple statement like that. Is it more appropriate or accurate to say, “Today would have been her fourth birthday” or “She would be four today” or some other phrasing? Even figuring out how to state today’s significance feels complicated.

Had Isabella lived, mothering her and life would be unimaginably different. This weekend we would likely have a small birthday party outside (due to COVID), possibly with a princess theme. Some of the kids who would have come to the party, we have never met. We would have taken her birthday for granted, grateful for her life, yet unaware of what a tremendous gift it is to celebrate it.

When we sang her “Happy Birthday,” we would tag on the line, “and many more.” Instead, when I quietly sang to her this morning, there was a painful awareness that she only had her birth-day but we never celebrated “many mores” with her.

On a practical level, we might own different cars if she had lived. Last month we had another baby and accommodating three car seats would be extremely tight in our current cars. Our house has three bedrooms - would we be looking at moving or would two of our kids share a room?

Because of Isabella’s life and death, we parent differently. When our infant is loudly grunting in her sleep at night or our son wakes up crying from a bad dream or cough, there is often a recognized sweetness to this disruption. These days, our home is loud with a toddler’s elephant feet and an infant’s squawks as it should be. The quiet undisturbed days and nights that pervaded our home after Isabella’s birth and death were loud in their contrast to the anticipated noise. Even now, with the delightful cacophony of two children at home, there is an absence that would have been filled by a four-year-old’s energetic song.

On her fourth birthday, we miss her. We lean into our family and the community that mourns her with us. We reflect on the time we had with Isabella, the ways she changed us, and wonder about the moments we will never experience. This afternoon we will refresh the flowers on her grave, sing “Happy Birthday” in a cemetery, and snuggle our other children a little tighter. We know we will see her again and praise the God that gave us three beautiful children.