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Bittersweet Days

I need to go pick up my four year olds Kindergarten packet today. A packet that ensures me he really is going to school next year.
In order to get said packet, I need to bring proof that
A) We live where we say we do
and
B) A birth certificate

I opened the safe where we keep our "important stuff" and found the envelope marked BIRTH CERTIFICATES.
I opened it slowly, taking a deep breath, as I knew what I was about to find.

I first came across Oldest's. I forgot the actual time of his birth (8:15PM) and glanced over the part that mentioned he is a twin.
My signature has changed from a neatly written name to a now, illegible scribble.

I neatly folded it away and pulled out the next one. I hoped it was Youngest's so that I would have a reason to put it away afterwards.

But it wasn't.
Zachary Jonathan Stern
Born 8:11PM. August 7, 2003.
Twin.


Attached to the birth certificate was his death certificate.

They called him Baby Zachary Jonathan Stern (which only stings even harder)
Cause of death: prematurity and lung hypolplasia

Oddly there's a part that states never married.

So as I prepare for my youngest son's departure into the world of Kindergarten, I am reminded of my past.
I am reminded that I was supposed to be a mother of two boys; yet they were to be twins.
I am reminded that there is one that I will never watch enter kindergarten.
I am reminded that his lungs were just too little and that he was born too early.
I am brought back to a time in my life when I feared waking up each day because I was afraid of what my pregnancy would bring me.

This day is bittersweet.
I may not have had Youngest if Zachary survived.
And that is a thought I cant even imagine.
Yet it's hard for me to imagine what life would have been like with Zachary.
and it's unfair to me that I never got the chance to know.

I feel I'm in an endless circle with my thoughts and am reminded of a song that I'm sure I've quoted on more then one occasion

And the seasons, they go round and round
and the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We cant return we can only look
behind from where we came
and go round and round and round in the circle game

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