To my son, it is simply a game of whack-a-mole, of target practice. He does not yet know what death is.

I asked myself: what could others be feeling if they were to lose me?

But there's the other side too. There are people who will jump in after you. There are others who will grab your hand and pull.

I am writing you today so that if, for whatever God forbidden reason, I am not here on earth with you when you have your first child, you will have something to hopefully provide you with some sort of closeness to me.

One expects some measure of recognition from the one person on the planet who ostensibly understands the loss of this particular child from a parent’s perspective.

It’s a club no one wants to join, yet so many people are part of.

You’re my light at the end of a tunnel of sadness, of heartache, and of pain.

In the days immediately following the birth of my stillborn baby, I played a lot of baseball.

After the loss of my infant son, I began to notice the vast number of minefields that we navigate during every conversation.

This poem was written for my sister who recently received the heartbreaking news that at 16 weeks gestation her baby’s heart had stopped beating.