Jules

This 'blog entry is lovingly dedicated to Jules K. Dahn, July 24- July 28, 2008.

Time. It's the one commodity everyone covets, works hard to have more of, wastes in a myriad of silly and superficial ways, and ultimately loses track of because it cannot be controlled.

It cannot be bought, it can't be bartered (although some, including myself have tried this), and it can't be captured, not really.

We try to catch time and hold it fast. Film, magnetic tape, disk, canvas, paint, ink -- all ways to record a slice of a moment that exists independent of our effort, darting this way or that like a spark from a bonfire flying haphazardly up into the night.

And so it was with Jules, the long-awaited, much loved, hoped for son of a friend of mine from high school.

His story started out pretty much like all baby stories -- excitement, anticipation, the pinning on of a future that began to take shape long before he was due to arrive.

The derailment came when doctors said he was the victim of a vicious chromosomal storm that would not let up.

There were options. . .

My friend and his wife chose the road less travelled, the one the poet Robert Frost writes of so eloquently, the one that isn't the favored way but promises great reward at its end.

They left their son alone to grow in the safety of his mother's womb.

Time always loomed large, and for those of us not directly suspended in this exquisitely painful-joyful limbo, it seemed to fly by quickly.

Seeing Jules' birth photos made my heart sing. Oh, he is so beautiful, so handsome, so reflective of all that is true and right and purposeful! Knowing he had survived the potentially treacherous journey to reach his parents' arms had me crying and laughing at the same time. My friend used to report from time to time how active Jules was in utero and this always spoke volumes to me. Jules had a purpose, a role to play, a task to carry out. He wasn't privy to the musings of those who said he wouldn't, couldn't, or shouldn't.

And so he defied them all, living long enough to give his parents that precious, albeit fleeting, gift of time together with their much-beloved son.

I don't presume to know how long it takes to begin to recover from having to say goodbye so soon after meeting one's child.

But I do know this, that time is not the enemy so many people make it out to be. No, the real enemy is our failure to hope, a failure that cheats us of more than we could possibly know.

I'm glad my friends had the good sense to beat back that impulse, because their hope became our hope and it strengthens us even now. Was having Jules for only three days worth the months of anxious waiting?

One look at the beautiful faces of my friends smiling down on their beautiful boy leads me to believe it was.