Adam's death had been hard. Cara knew that burying a son was always hard, specially if it was one as young as Adam had been. Yet, his short life had been hard too, he was born terribly ill, and he had been ill all his life. Cara had suffered seeing him in pain, not understanding what happened around him, always connected to a thousand machines. He hadn't lived long enough to learn how to crawl, not that he would have been able to, anyway.
When Cara was first told her newborn son wouldn't be able to live to his first birthday, she went through each and every one of the stages of grief. She first thought that it was impossible, that the doctor must have been mistaken, that those results weren't her son's, she asked for a second opinion, and for a third, and she finally gave up, because all along she had known something was amiss with little Adam. Bargaining didn't hit much, she would have given everything she had for her son to be healthy, but there was no one there who would be able to change it. Then came anger, she looked for someone to blame, she blamed her boyfriend, she blamed all his family, but above all she blamed herself, she blamed herself so hard she spiraled into depression. However, seeing her son fight for his life made her realize there was a reason to continue, her son might die young, but that wasn't a reason to give him as much love as he deserved, in fact she would need to give him all the love he deserved in a much shorter period of time.
Taking profit of the maternity leave, Cara moved into the maternity guard. The hospital installed a bed next to her son's incubator, and she would spend the day and night with him. She read to him all the tales she had been read when she was young, when she ran out of those she moved into her first books, and then to the classics. The nurses would stop beside her for a couple of minutes to hear her reading, and some of them would even relieve her so she could take a break. When she wasn't reading she simply held her son against her chest, wishing she could sing to calm him down. Cara loved feeling his warmth against her skin, it was a measure of the love he wouldn't be able to give her.
The day Adam's died, Cara had been reading him "A Farewell To Arms", she loved Hemingway with all her heart, and there had been passion in her voice. When she finished the book she sighted and wiped a tear from her eye. She next took her son and held him close, he had been awake throughout the story, but he was really calm at that moment. Cara leaned on the chair and caressed her son's hair, telling him how much did she love him. He didn't even move, and before she realized he was dead. Cara didn't cry, she was sad, because it was her only son, but she knew she had done the best to make Adam feel loved, and she knew that he had died feeling loved.
This one made me cry a little.
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