Icing on the Cake

~176~

I couldn’t believe how much Gabriel looked like Calum Jr.

Seeing Gabriel, so tiny, so helpless, connected to a million tubes inside a glass box in the ICU…it made me feel very emotional.

I sat in this hospital when Julia was still pregnant, and I begged her to get an abortion. For God’s sake, I begged her to kill this poor baby.

But she didn’t do it, and in that moment, I was so glad that she didn’t. No matter how much pain was endured from our loss, our love for Gabriel, and our family, would always be stronger.

And the fact that we couldn’t take him home was killing me.

Doctors kept saying that things were looking pretty good, and that it would be just a few days before he would get to come home. But that didn't stop us from worrying like crazy...

Once we got home from seeing him, Julia made a somewhat surprising offer.

“You two need to have a date.” Julia said to us.

“What?” We responded, in shock.

“This is hard time. I can watch the twins tomorrow night. Go, have dinner, do something together. Get your mind off this.”

I could see the romantic shimmer light up Calum’s eyes.

“I’ll make it amazing for us.” Calum promised me.

“There are no doubts you’ll do that.” I responded.

Adam was in the living room when Anastasia then walked down the stairs. “Can we go swimming?” Anastasia asked.

Adam jumped up excitedly. He loved it when someone else, other than just him, wanted to go swimming. Especially when it was Anastasia.

“We’ll all go?” Julia suggested.

And for an hour, we all swam around in the pool, laughing, being the conjoined, comically dysfunctional family we are, and for an hour, we were able to focus on something other than the pain in our life.

Notes

Hoppy Easter y'all!