Disclosure

Colin still wears this shirt, occasionally, and by choice:

It's pretty small, having been bought right before Dylan was born.  Colin was just five years and three months old.  If he lifts his lanky eight-year-old arms up while he's wearing it, you can see his belly.  It has been relegated to the play-clothes drawer, only to be worn on weekends. I started to fold it with the clean laundry the other day and started crying. 

I wanted him to be a big brother so badly, and not to a child who had to leave us so early.  The ache over this loss, Colin's loss, is still strong in my chest--something that has not really subsided over the past year.

Yet Colin's coping skills are much like Jason's and mine. At the beginning of school, on his "About me" worksheet, he wrote "no" under the question about brothers and sisters.  He also told a doctor the other day who asked if he had any siblings that he didn't have any, looking nervously over at me to see if it was okay.

It both saddened me and gave me relief that this self-preservation instinct was intact.  It's the same thing I do.  It's not worth getting into with most people. When I am asked about children, I don't always say I have one--although it's most often the easiest response. Occasionally, there's a situation that allows me to say two without having the other part of the conversation--the "where is he?" part. The other day I was in a waiting room talking to a woman with an infant who was crying.  The woman was self-conscious. We started chatting about infant things, as women often do, and it put her at ease.  Without thinking, I'd talked about giving my youngest one chamomile for an upset tummy, as well as referring to Colin's infant stories.  When the woman asked how many kids I had, I said two.  When it came to infant care, I fully deserved to lay claim to both. 

It's a treat when I can talk about Dylan without having to explain where he is.

The part that hurts me is that Colin feels inclined to hide a part of himself that he was so proud of, a title that he was so thrilled to have.  A love that was so big that now seems to have no place to go.  He is the big brother--of a brother he can no longer kiss, play with, boss around, fight with.  

I am not sure how long he will want to keep wearing the shirt.  I will always keep it for him, long after it is too small to wear.  My hope is that his pain will become smaller and smaller, like his shirt, until he can just put it away as a keepsake and touch it every once in awhile.