Being Home

Coming home from the hospital after our son died was a fractured scene. 

There were new maternity clothes strewn across the dining room table. New tops, pjs, and leggings still had their tags because they had just arrived; I had purchased them to get me through the next two months of pregnancy because of the changing weather and my changing waistband.

The couch held crumpled sheets from the night before. We had just set up an assembly line of pumping parts so that I could get into a nighttime routine without having to go up and down the stairs while I was recovering from my C-section. I had been so proud of waking up at 1 am and 4 am with a job to do for my baby.

Around the house, we had started setting out little things after our baby shower. Baby books and toys were waiting to become part of our everyday life.

Everywhere we looked was evidence of the whirlwind we had gone through in three days: the abrupt end of my pregnancy, the arrival of our son, and the cruelty of losing him so soon.

Despite my C-section pain, I cleaned everything up by the next morning. The maternity clothes disappeared from the table. The pumping parts were hidden away. The sheets were removed from the couch. We put away the evidence of a NICU-parent routine that had lasted one night, instead of weeks like we had expected.

We had already started changing the house to prepare for our baby. We have a buffet table on our main floor that used to be a bar. It held bottles, glassware, and decor that we collected along with the memories from our travels over the years. That table was one of the first visible ways our home began making room for our baby; we were turning the bar into a change table. We bought a new sideboard for the booze and breakables and placed a changing pad we had received at our baby shower on top of the buffet.

After Nathan died, the change table became an altar for him.

Instead of diapers and wipes, the table held cards, flowers, his memory box from the hospital, and pictures. It gave our family somewhere to gather around the tangible pieces of his life when he could not be physically present in the home we had prepared for him. It gave our friends somewhere to hear Nathan’s story in the early days, see his footprints, and hold his little blood-pressure cuff, since they didn’t get to meet him.

I remember fearing that our home would be too painful to stay in because every room held reminders of our loss. But instead of resetting the house to how it had looked before we were expecting a baby, we made room for our baby even though he was no longer earthside with us. Nathan’s things began to fit seamlessly throughout the house.

On a shelf on our main floor, we have a poster showing the starry night sky on the day that Jordan and I started dating. Beside it now is a carved wooden family of giraffes puzzle engraved with our three names. The decor on the shelf always looked unfinished and our family puzzle makes it feel complete.

Upstairs, I had a gallery wall corner that I never finished. Now, at the top of the stairs, we have a matching night sky poster gifted by my friends that shows the day we met Nathan. On the ledge, we have his photo, footprints, and his urn alongside photos from our wedding day and Jordan’s brother’s wedding day so he’s beside his immediate family: his parents, grandparents, and Schwartz great-grandparents. The house has not become a shrine, but passing by Nathan’s corner multiple times each day helps keep remembrance at the forefront for us and marks his place in our family. 

Our grief counsellor suggested that having visible things for and about him could help us, and could also remind visitors that they were allowed to ask about him. Soon after Nathan’s funeral, about a month after he died, we closed his NICU memory box and added it to his corner. We did not need every hospital item to remain on display to keep him present for us. Putting “hospital Nathan” to rest gave us peace and helps us remember more than the circumstances in which we met and lost him.

From bar to change table to altar, our buffet table has held each stage of how our home made room for Nathan. We now have everyday items on the table such as a fruit bowl and plants, but we also have his NICU quilt on the shelf below and tealight candles for easy access when we want to light a candle for our baby. We also have a framed acknowledgement of trees that were planted in his memory: a thoughtful living tribute from dear friends and their baby who was born the day after Nathan died. 

While we cocooned inside our home in the early days and everything changed, the world around us kept going. Even now, it keeps showing me the life we were supposed to have with Nathan.

There are children everywhere in our townhouse complex. Everything that made our neighbourhood family-friendly is now a painful reminder. There are parks nearby, schools close to us, and kids playing outside our driveway because our part of the complex is quiet and safe.

We are not very close with most of our neighbours, so I sometimes wonder whether they noticed I was pregnant or whether they are curious about what happened. I do not tell them, and they do not ask. If I see them while out, I usually wave with a tight smile, close the garage door, and take my grief inside.

I see a pregnant woman and her husband walking through the complex. I see people cooing over someone else’s new baby in a stroller. Somewhere nearby, another baby cries, and that’s always the tipping point for me to shut my windows.

Only the neighbours directly across from us know about Nathan’s arrival and death. We used to joke that she would probably see our light on in the middle of the night because I was awake with the baby. Now, she has told me that she watches for lights and movement to make sure we are okay.

We drive past the daycare connected to our church where we had booked Nathan a spot for when he turned a year old and I would be back at work. Now, the daycare has put up a picture of an angel with a note that says, “Nathan, watch over us.”

Outside, I keep seeing the life we expected. Inside, we are learning how to keep living without our baby earthside.

We always had pictures around the house. Now, we have pictures of Nathan. We also have framed photos from my maternity photoshoot to remember the joy of carrying him and the connection we had with him before we met him.

We used to get deliveries for baby things. Now, we get grief books and care packages.

We have always lit candles for ambience. Now, I light candles for Nathan, and I call on him for extra strength and his presence when I’m especially missing him. 

I was so looking forward to bringing my baby home from the hospital. Instead, the first time he came home was in an urn. It makes me sick to think about, but I am relieved to have a physical part of him with me again.

Home has become one of the places where I feel closest to Nathan. It’s where we continue to build a life that holds both his absence and his presence. It is still the three of us here, just as it was always meant to be.