Sometimes I See Double

(I submitted this post to Still Standing and it was published on March 5, 2013, head here to see the original posting.)

Sometimes I still see double. It’s been almost four years since I held my twin sons in my arms for the first and the very last time. Will was born, and still is perfectly healthy. MJ fought a battle with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) for 35 days before we were given the choice to let him die on an operating table or in our arms. We held him and we got one moment, which lasted a few hours to feel the weight of two infants in our arms.

The first year I swear I saw two babies every time I looked at Will. Very slowly MJ’s ghost seemed to fade from my mind as Will got older. The more time that passed the more we became parents to one living child and less parents of twins in which one died. We met new people and did new things and were completely focused on giving Will the childhood we longed to give two little boys.

We sacrificed a lot those first few years. Someone once told us that we had to ‘fake it till we would make it’. Somewhere around year three we started feeling like we were making it instead of faking it. Will, and now Maci Jayne- our rainbow baby, lack for nothing. They are spoiled in a way that only living children of bereaved parents can be.

Now Will is starting to understand and grasp that he is a twin to a brother he can only see in pictures. He likes to look at them and ask questions that we don’t have answers to. His eyes get so big and sad when he asks ‘Why is MJ in the sky? I want to see him.’ Those are questions that won’t ever be answered this side of Heaven.

I wonder if we are doing it right. I wonder if we talk too much about MJ, or if we talk too little about him. I wonder if we are exposing him to a side of life that is far beyond his little minds comprehension. Especially when he asks if the zoo’s pregnant orangutan’s baby will go fly in the sky like MJ.

I suppose we can only do the best that we can, but really- what is the best that we can? Will and Maci seem happy. They laugh a lot and are both further socially and academically than where guidelines suggest they should be. So I suppose however we are doing it is working.

But I still sometimes see double when I look at Will. When he’s brushing his teeth, or running up the stairs, or when I kiss him goodnight I wonder how it would be to kiss two little heads in two little beds like I dreamed the moment the doctor said ‘Its twins!’ And the more Will asks questions the more I wonder what it could be like if he lived, and the more I long for what my mind sometimes tricks me into seeing.