Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis, sang by Haley Reinhart

It’s impossible to talk about William further without talking about his dad, Alex. So, buckle up- there’s gonna be a lot of sap and a lot of love in this one.

I looked at Kara, while my heart was pretty close to breaking through my chest and I held the bouquet of fake flowers I had put together months before in preparation for the exact moment that was getting ready to happen. The plan was that Alex was going to start the vinyl I had made with all the songs we had chosen for the day. The first song on said vinyl was this song and I had kept it secret from Alex until he started it right before I walked down the aisle. I looked at Kara, my “personal attendant” and one of my oldest friends, and said, “Holy shit, this is actually happening. I’m getting married.” Her face lit up and she said, “It’s actually happening. You’re getting married.” She motioned for me to start walking down the hallway toward the room with almost 200 people waiting for me. I couldn’t see Alex until Haley sang, “Darlin’, so it goes. Some things are meant to be.” He was crying, just like I expected and I was smiling. I really couldn’t help falling in love with him even more that day.

Our vows were personally written by each of us and oddly similar in nature even though they were a surprise to one another (lol), but they were perfect. There was so much said in that perfectly timed ceremony, but you know what wasn’t said or imagined or expected? That our first born would die only 97 days after he was born. We never imagined having to navigate something that hard or heavy. Shortly after our wedding, when we were planning to come home from our honeymoon in Costa Rica, Alex tested positive for COVID and the executive order to have a negative test to come back into the country was still in place for another three weeks. He stayed in Costa Rica for another week alone. Sure, that felt hard and heavy. And sure, when I was six months pregnant on Christmas Day we were stranded in NYC and we had to drive back to Minnesota after several flights were cancelled to get us back home. That seemed hard and heavy. We were as ready as we possibly could be for parenthood and the sleepless nights and frustrations, but we couldn’t have been prepared for William’s journey.

Although we couldn’t be prepared, and it was the hardest and heaviest three months of our lives, man did that love I “couldn’t help falling” into grow. It was stretched to every limit with talks about next steps and hard lines we wouldn’t cross or dare to move. That love felt whole with William lying between us on that hospital bed on June 28, and somehow still shattered because William was leaving in just minutes. We held hands on William’s chest as he stopped breathing. We sat and we each held him after he passed and talked about how peaceful he was and beautiful without all the shit attached to his face. We cried together and hugged in the parking garage before we left the hospital.

Since that day, we’ve felt the ache of missing William countless times together. We’ve lived through the funeral, a miscarriage of his “almost” sibling, through the holidays, and we welcomed in the new year with some of those broken pieces from William being dead. And we’ve also let some pieces come back. Still with cracks, but sticking together again. We’ve done work with a couples therapist and voiced frustrations with other people and their support, and we’ve laughed and smiled remembering the joy William brought us. And… we’ve started a non-profit in honor of him that’s still in the planning and preparing stages, but it’s a dream that was born of the love and gratitude we have for William. We’ve laughed, and danced, and made fun of each other since William died.

Colin Campbell in his book, Finding the Words, speaks about the myth that marriages after losing children mostly end in divorce. There is a false statistic in our society that 90% of marriages end after a child’s death. Mr. Campbell explained that it’s actually the other way around. 10% of marriages after the death of a child end. Before moving forward, let me say that I don’t blame any of those couples for choosing to walk away from each other. It’s absolutely understandable and divorce just sometimes happens. However, isn’t it beautiful that Alex and I are apart of that 90% of other bereaved parents? It feels really beautiful to me.

Speaking of beautiful… The day we were married was absolutely one of the best days of my life, and it’s cliche, but I thought I couldn’t help falling in love with him then. What I feel for him now doesn’t feel even comparable. William has given us so many gifts and continues to. One of those gifts is the bigger, deeper, heavier (in the grounding sense) love we have for each other. I know William would’ve been so much like him and I wish I could’ve seen that part of our son. Even if the jokes were bad and the stubbornness was ever-present, I can imagine it would’ve lit up a room in the same way Alex’s does. Falling in love with Alex brought William to all of us too, so how beautiful is it that it’s only growing?

I’m having a hard time ending this one, because I really could go on and on about Alex. But I suppose I’ll just say a huge, silent “thank you” to our sweet squish face for making the love we have for one another jump to another level, right next to the love we have for him.