The Blanket

I sleep with a small blanket tucked under my pillow every night. It is a soft flannel swaddle blanket in light green with white stars.

It is the blanket I held Spencer in, as he passed away. It has never, nor will it ever be washed, since that day.

It’s like a piece of him, a piece of that day, is embedded in the fibers, As long as I keep it safe, cared for, loved, than I am keeping a small part of Spencer safe as well.

I even bought Emerson a different pattern of the same set of swaddles. so the softness was familiar to me when he came home and snuggled. But the rest of the feelings around it, his calm breathing, his soft noises, his fingers wrapped around mine gave me a feeling of peace that it is how Spencer is now.

He is safe, warm, loved, cared for in a way only newborns feel.

By keeping his blanket, I am somehow able to show he is cared for, every day and every night, and that I will always be his mom, and be there for him.

When we left the hospital that day. We did so with a heavy and empty carseat. A bag of blankets, outfits, handprints and footprints. Tokens of the child we should have been leaving the hospital with, that instead, we were leaving behind. It was and still is the hardest walk I have ever made.

We walked out of the hospital room, without him, one last time, and we would never go back there, to him, again.

The blanket is small. It sometimes falls behind the bed, gets squished between pillows, ends up on the floor. But it is always here, with me. I see it when I clean up, change the sheets, settle in for bed. A reminder at the end of each day that I have made it, that I’m still standing, that Spencer is by my side.

It is a small, little blanket, but it is so much bigger than that.