Happy Heavenly Birthday

At 3:02 am on January 20th, 1988, my son Ben was born dead. I had been given morphine to offset the pain of labor as I was prepped for an unplanned cesarean section. As soon as it hit my bloodstream, it was in Ben’s too. His heart rate immediately bottomed out and separating the two of us became an emergency. When the delivering doctor handed him to the nurse, he was blue. This all took place after enduring 72-hours of labor as a very young mother. To add fuel to the fire, the moon became full while I was laboring, which overflowed the entire labor and delivery wing AND one of those really awful, crippling blizzards was happening outside making the driving conditions for anyone to be there absolutely treacherous. Remember, it was also three o’clock in the morning!

After delivering Ben, I didn’t arrive to my own room until two hours later. I asked my nurse to please let me rest for a while and when I woke up I would come and get my baby. Well, a shift change took place and my request was lost, so, two (micro) hours later, a nurse barged into my room with baby Ben. He was perfect, with his bright ocean blue eyes and was wearing a hat almost the same color. His mouth was opening and closing like a baby bird begging for food. The 72- hours of labor I had endured followed by major surgery, with almost no food and zero rest, went out the window. I forgot all about it the minute I looked into his eyes and held him for the first time.

I knew that Ben reacted to the morphine I was given, but I didn’t know it literally took the life out of him until two days later when the delivering doctor came to check on him. I had no clue and my reaction to his account of what happened made it obvious that no one had told me. When the doctor removed Ben from me, there was a sheet partitioned between me and the surgical staff. I had also vomited on the way to the operating room (morphine effects) and was horribly nauseous and exhausted, so I did not see his tiny unbreathing, blue body.

To say Ben’s “birth”- day was memorable is the understatement of the century. It was unforgettable in every sense of the word, yet only gave me more cause to love him. His first birthday only produced one picture of half of his face because the film didn’t process correctly in my 110 camera (aging me and those of you who know what I am talking about). His fifth birthday brought an ice storm that turned every flat surface in our metropolitan area into a skating rink, which cancelled his party. In the midst of this, my great grandmother died, yes, on his birthday. We improvised and plopped a candle into a cupcake and my mom and I sang to him. I did manage to capture an adorable picture of him sporting cowboy boots and a buzz cut while blowing out the candle.

I believe birthdays need to be celebrated and I always did so with Ben. No matter what day of the week it fell on, Ben’s birthday was made special. Even though he hated having a winter birthday, it often fell on Martin Luther King day so he got the day off from school. If I didn’t make him his favorite meal, we would go out. Call me a bad mom, but I started bringing him to Hooters when he was thirteen. He loved it. I am pretty sure we were there for birthdays 13, 14 and 15! It was his day and he was worth celebrating however he wanted.

Ben only got twenty-one birthdays here on earth, but that hasn’t kept me from celebrating him and doing something special in his honor on this day. Since his death, the day he was shot, the day he was removed from life support or the day of his funeral are not the hardest days, it’s his birthday. None of those other days had meaning before 2009. January 20th did for twenty-one years, it still does. I have done fun things and had some amusing things happen that I feel Ben orchestrated and laughed at as he watched them play out. There was the year that Jenny (one of his best girls) and me wanted to release balloons for him. We went to Freedom Park, a place Ben and I had gone together often. It sits high on a bluff above the confluence of the Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers on the Minnesota and Wisconsin border. It was a cold and blustery day. Twice we released the balloons and twice they got caught up in the brush below where we were standing. Twice Jenny climbed below and untangled them only to have them get caught on something else. We gave up and settled for taking a selfie of us with the balloons in the trees behind us. Our fingers were frozen as we fumbled to push the buttons on my phone. We were able to snap off a handful of shots but when we turned around the balloons were gone! We did a double take! They were nowhere in sight. We looked at the pictures and there, before our eyes and unbeknownst as we were taking the pictures, Ben’s balloons untangled themselves and were captured in our pictures, but blew out of sight before we turned around. What we had attempted, he apparently wanted to do himself. I swear we could hear him laughing from the Heavens.

The next year, I went back to Freedom Park, but this time with no balloons. The park has a short walking path around it, so I thought I would enjoy a walk and asked Ben to show me a sign that he was there with me. I had paused near the overlook where Jenny and I danced with the balloons the year before in hopes of seeing a bald eagle or a hawk. Nothing. I continued on and was almost to the end and thought to myself that the day was young and there was still plenty of
time for him to give me a sign. As I am doing this, I was walking backwards looking to the sky still hoping for a sign from Ben. Nothing. When I turned around I almost hit my nose on one of those stand alone community book sharing libraries. I had never seen this here before. It was new. I took a step back to go around it and smiled from ear to ear when I read the nameplate on the box. It said, “Benjamin’s Books.” There’s my sign!!! I reached for my phone to take a picture and that very moment, one of Ben’s ranger brothers sent me a text that said, “I love you, Mom.”
I laughed out of sheer joy and swear I could hear Ben laughing with me again.

This year is Ben’s tenth birthday in Heaven. Since shortly after he died, I have been wearing a memorial bracelet in his honor. It has not been off my wrist for longer than a minute or two in these ten years. It was black when I put it on. It is now silver from wear and tear and the inscriptions are fading. I decided it’s time to take it off and keepsake it while the words are still legible. I can’t just leave my wrist naked, so I am getting a tattoo to replace it. I have been pondering this for more than two years. I was feeling drawn towards a Phoenix, a mythological bird that symbolizes resurrection or a life transformed or born anew. It is often associated with meaning a “rising from the ashes.” The first time I googled “phoenix tattoo”, I about fell over in my chair when a simple drawing of a phoenix came up with “KOP”, “Est. 2009” in it’s center. There it is! Decision made! I had to look up what that meant and found “Krewe of Phoenix”, established in 2009 as an organization from Alabama that celebrates Mardi Gras in their own unique way. My mind was made up.

I have put off doing this for more than a year. It’s time to honor Ben in a way I haven’t before; with a permanent reminder that “Still I Rise”, as the Phoenix does. It is a symbol of being born anew and resurrected to new life. Ben’s birth and death have transformed me as I never imagined I could be. I will honor his day of birth til I celebrate my last. The birthdays without him are only physical, he celebrates with me and I hear his encouragement often to rise from the ashes and keep going.

Happy Heavenly Birthday, Benjamin. I love you! ~ Mom

Just like moons and like suns, with the certainty of tides, just like hopes springing high, still I'll rise. ~ Maya Angelou, Still I Rise.