Requiem for Baby

Today was hard for our family. Baby had to be put down.

Old picture. Nobody would want to see Baby today.

I went out to check on the guineas, and the blood we had seen the last couple of days was still there. There was no new blood, but I did notice something I hadn't noticed before. Baby's foot, far away from Baby. We're thinking frostbite was an issue although we did our best to keep Baby warm in this brutal cold.

I told my husband, and he went out to do his duty. The children stayed inside, wailing, with me. It wasn't easy. They had questions of "why?" and resolved that we needed to bury Baby. Some of them felt the need to troop out with Daddy to dig the hole and bury our poor, picked-on guinea.

Today was a tough day to be the mother, to be the one trying to explain death and comfort. I know all the Biblical answers, so far as we are able to know. I know to share our Comfort, but their little hearts still grieved. More than one of them made a connection between Baby's death and the eventual death of their grandparents. Dealing with this is just not easy.

However, I am not the only one today dealing with the loss of a baby. An acquaintance of mine lost her own baby yesterday unexpectedly, her 15-year-old son. I'm sure she, too, was struggling not only with her own grief, but how to explain to and comfort her living children.

My struggle pales in comparison. May God be with you and yours, friend.