I Have a Brother

A story by Angela May

I lived and I died and my parents didn't even know that I was there. My mother miscarried me before she even missed a period. It is something that does occur quite often but no one knows how often. After all, how do you count something that you don't even know happened?

I am fortunate though because my mother has a unique talent. She has dreams that are messages just for her. She doesn't talk about it much because she knows that people will think she is weird. She's only had a few of these dreams over the course of her life and they only come to give her very important messages. She dreamt about my father a few months before she actually met him and it took about a month of dating him for her to finally recognize that he was the man in her dream and that she was supposed to marry him. It was another seven years before they got married. My mother says that she has always loved my father deeply but in times of self-doubt, love isn't always enough. Remembering the dream she had about my father helped her to put aside the doubts and focus on the man she loved.

On the night that I died, I visited my mother in a dream. She saw me being carried away from her in the arms of someone she didn't know. She saw me as I would have looked, had I lived. A little girl about four years old. She saw my dark curly hair with just the right amount of curl; the way she always wished her hair would curl. She saw my blue eyes; the same color as her eyes. I called to her "Mama" and reached my hand out. I saw that her heart was breaking. She wanted to come to me and hold me. She was sitting with my father, but he was unaffected by what was going on. Outside the dream, in real life, he was unsure that he wanted children and he was completely unaware of my existence. I know he would have felt differently if I had lived. Something told my mother that she couldn't come to me and that I couldn't stay with her. She understood that but she didn't understand why.

My mother shared her dream with my father after a few days had passed and she could talk about it with out crying. My mother thought that the dream was telling her that she had a daughter waiting to be born and it was time to have children. My father was not ready for children. Years passed and my mother often thought of me and wondered if she would find me. She searched for me online in the pictures of children available for adoption. When she visited other countries she looked for me in the faces of the street children who begged for coins from the rich American tourists. Sometimes, my mother thought the dream was telling her that she had lost her opportunity to be a mother because she selfishly waited to have children. Not being "worthy" to have children has been a fear of my mother's since she was a child. It is an unfounded fear but it plagues her nonetheless.

Time has a way of softening people and changing their perspective. It has been six years after I lived and died and my father has come to appreciate the joy and struggles that enrich a life when one has children. He and my mother were talking about having a child and trying for a child. They were nervous, excited, frightened and so much more. Then one day my mother felt nauseous and her pregnancy test came back positive. They were going to have a child!

It took a while for the reality to set in but soon my mother and father began talking about "when the baby comes". During the first ultrasound, the embryo sac showed plainly on the screen. However, it was small for seven weeks and no heartbeat was detected. Maybe the calculations were off and the baby was actually younger than seven weeks. Still full of hope my parents waited another week to give the baby a chance to grow. Two days shy of the doctor's appointment, there was spotting and the doctor was called. "It could be nothing." My parents were told "Come to the doctor's office in the morning."

My mother had a dream that night about a little boy with thick sandy blonde hair that reminded her of her father's thick hair. She held him tight because she knew he couldn't stay. He looked into my mother's eyes and she saw the close resemblance to my father. Her heart was breaking again. My father was also in this dream. Though silent he stretched his arms around his wife and son and held them tight. Then the dream was over and my mother woke to find she had indeed miscarried again.

The day ahead was long and painful. They had to visit the doctor to ensure that my mother would be OK. There were a lot of tears and now the reality of a lost child had to set in. As my mother pondered the dream she had of the little boy, she began to feel that it was her son saying goodbye and this brought her comfort. My mother believes strongly that the soul does go on after this life and she immediately felt that her son, though only a few weeks old, would go on and would one day meet her after she passed out of this life.

It didn't take long for her to finally understand her dream about a little girl with dark curly hair so many years ago. It was not a dream about a lost child to be found or a warning of dire consequences for postponing children. The dream was just her daughter saying "I am here, I am your daughter."

You may be sceptical that any of this could be true. It isn't scientific or based on any real evidence. It doesn't matter, my mother knows in her heart that I exist and I have a brother.