On April 2, 2024, my wife passed our third child due to a miscarriage. For many reasons, this loss was especially difficult. My wife had been struggling for over a year with unknown, chronic sickness (that is still ongoing). A pregnancy that had filled us with hope was cut all too short by a careless world. On top of this, my wife suffered serious side-effects from the passing of the child, resulting in multiple ER visits, a short hospitalization, and months of recovery. I can confidently say that it was the worst week of our respective lives.
What’s more, we missed our baby. We missed praying for this new life, anticipating who it would be and how it would change our family. I remember being angry that our third child would remain unknown and forgotten by our world. It was in this frustration, however, that I remembered a poem by Tennyson, on the death of one of his children: On His Stillborn Son (I had read this poem in the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets collection of Tennyson poetry. I cannot find any other source for this poem online.) A truly sorrowful poem, one that had affected me long before we lost our child. Yet, this poem came to mind because it did something special for that boy that died so long ago: it gave him life. His life is now remembered because of what his father wrote while grieving for him.
In this way, I decided to write a poem for the remembrance of our child, so that it would not be forgotten. And even more, we praise God that this life has not been forgotten, and that it now lives in bliss with the One who had planned from all eternity to make it.
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