Creative Writing Challenge #20 - Talk about a life lost that would change your life significantly if that person were still here.

In the late 1980s our family was blessed by a baby boom that brought us five little boys.  As they reach their landmark years of high school graduation and legal drinking age, it's hard not to reflect back on the one that didn't survive and wonder what our family would be like if he had.

All of these boys were special in their own way; Xavier was my mother's first great-grandson, Jesse was my baby brother's first child, Shane was my older brother's first grandchild, Josh was my sister's only son and 17 years younger than his only sibling, and Cody would have been Josh's nephew.  I have watched the four grow up, through baby steps and baseball games, first words and fisticuffs.  As they become men and start their own families, the missing boy is always close by; he lives still in our hearts.

Both Shane and Cody were born extremely premature and, for a while, we all wondered if our girls, being first-cousins, had some genetic defect that prevented them from carrying full-term pregnancies.  It was a frightening thought, but unfounded.  Shane was first, born in Summer, and was sent home with a heart-monitor after a relatively short hospital stay.  Cody was born mid-Fall but was in the hospital until late February.  He was on a ventilator most of the time resulting in the family joke that he'd never be able to eat peanut butter without getting it jammed into the permanent groove in the roof of his mouth!  Both babies seemed to have fought the good fight and seeing them come home to their anxious parents was a bit scary but very sweet.  It felt like all was right in the world.

Then in early March my sister called, sobbing, saying only "Cody died!!"  The hours and days and weeks afterward are still somewhat of a blur.  I recall the horrible hours sitting in the hospital with my sister and my niece waiting for someone, anyone, to come out and tell us he was going to be fine.  Unlike Shane, Cody left the hospital without any machinery.  He was eating and thriving and growing.  What could possibly gone wrong after so much had gone so right?  Finally, a nurse came out and without an ounce of compassion in her black-hearted soul, handed my niece her son's pajamas.  No words of comfort or kindness.  Just "here" and she was gone.  We were told later that Cody died from SIDS.  And while that diagnosis will allow a parent to believe there was nothing they could have done to save their child, it also leaves a lot of questions unanswered for the rest of their lives.

The funeral was so heart-wrenching I've blocked parts of it out and hope they never return.  Watching my niece's life fall apart was even worse.  She had a little brother, born the year before her son, and he may well be the one thing that has kept her from losing her mind.  To say the are close is a gross understatement.  She is like a mother to him and he is like her son.  But I know in my heart that a brother can never replace a child.  She has been to Hell and back, repeatedly.

So, when I watch one of the boys accomplishing a goal or simply talking to a cousin, I think about sweet Cody and wonder what he'd look like now.  We can only speculate on the damage his birth might have caused; would he be slow to learn or small in size or would he, like Shane, be athletic and smart?  Would his parents have stayed together had he lived?  Would he and Josh both play guitar and sing, or would Cody have been a drummer instead?

Who knows?  That's the part about a life cut short that never changes; you never get to see what that person would have accomplished.  Would he have impacted my own life significantly had he lived?  His uncle and his cousins have, so I'm sure he would have.  Every time I am with one or more of those boys I see the next generation of our family and know that the strength and wisdom of my own dad and brothers is within them.  They may not become world leaders, but they won't be failures either.  And when I allow myself to get 'round the heartache of losing Cody I imagine that he would have been the best of them all.