Coming Home

We picked our son up on July 2nd and brought him home.

Something we both held on to while in hospital with Stephen was the image of Steve carrying him out the doors in his car seat. On the days that felt hopeless I imagined my boys stepping into the sunshine together. I pictured that first drive home, probably sitting in the back with him because we’re new, anxious, parents on a long journey. I imagined carrying him into the house to meet his furry siblings. I imagined that first evening, just staring at him sleeping because we couldn’t believe he’d done it.

We never got that coming home.

Instead, I held him on my lap on the 2hr journey back from the funeral directors. I cradled that box that contains my son and spoke to him. We told him we loved him, that he was finally coming home and the three of us could finally be together. Steve carried our son into the house in a tiny white box. I still can’t believe how small it is. I still can’t believe my beautiful, perfect, little man is in there.

We brought him upstairs, to the room we so recently took his cot out of, and held him between us on the bed. We should have had our baby between us, not his ashes. It was raw, heart-rending and left us broken.

You’re told about that first day and night with your baby at home. You’re told how you’ll fuss and worry and watch them constantly. You’ll take them from room to room with you. That they’re time wasters and you’ll wonder where the hours have gone.

But what do you do when they come home in a box? Because that is where my baby is. I have his ashes in my bedroom, next to his photograph. It doesn’t feel right to carry him with us, to pretend he’s here. We can’t rock him to sleep, change him, just stare at him in awe. Equally, it feels wrong to leave him sat there. Alone. To not include him in our chatter. I wish him good morning and goodnight, but it’s a lie. It’s not good. I can’t imagine it ever will be.

I feel robbed of so much. I feel my little boy, my baby, was robbed of so much more.

This isn’t the coming home they tell you about.

No one tells you how to navigate coming home like this.