An Extra Dimension

Eeep! It's been awhile. It's August already. Phoebe would have been pretty big by now! I was caught off guard recently when a mom and her baby came for their final postpartum appointment - 6 weeks since the birth. The baby had been due within days of Phoebe's due date. Weird. The baby has added another dimension to the happy family, as all babies do, even dead ones.
   My family has settled into a comfortable place of acceptance. We have another dimension that most families don't. It is actually pretty cool having a family member on the "other side". She's officially not silent, go on and think I'm a crazy mother of a dead baby wishing for some significance to this sad story, but things are the way they are, and we get little messages pretty regularly. Usually by way of her big brother. I can pshaw that feeling of spiritual presence til the end of the world, but the things Jonah comes up with are not pshaw-able.

   Recently he woke from a long nap with a peel of his own laughter. I poked him and said, "Well why are YOU so happy?!" Giggling, he replied, "It's Phoebe!"


    The kid is two years old....there isn't much we say to him about this. The question loomed before us of how to explain death to him once we found out she would die; we settled on a simple "She's at Jesus' House" without elaborating. The last blog entry I put in told about how he explained to me that she's at a playground and laughing and all. More recently, when he chattered on about his baby "brudder" (brother....haha) the conversation went something like this,
   "She's laughing, but she misses Jonesy. And she misses mommy and daddy. And, hey! She's...." *leaps from coffee table to couch pretending to be super hero* "She's waitin' for mom. And she's my baby brudder."




    I was so jealous when I read, shortly after the birth and death, about a mom who had lost a baby and found the image of a cross on the baby's chest. It was a bruise on the baby, but it was a perfect little cross and it gave her comfort because it seemed to be a sign that the baby belonged somewhere else and with Someone else. I have always been so impatient....
  
   So yea. That's all I have to share today. Life with a little spirit hanging around is exciting! Every morning I find myself hoping Jojo will have more to tell. I'm guessing the messages can't last forever...he'll reach the age of reason and sending them might not be as easy since it takes the doubtless faith of a child to not think it's "just a dream" or one's "imagination" or whateva'....so I hope he talks bit more before then so we don't have to wait til we see her on the other side.