This week I've asked Monica Wesolowska to share the story of how she and her family honored the 10th birthday of their son Silvan, who died after only 38 days of life. Her critically-acclaimed memoir of Silvan's life and death is a tribute to the courage it takes to love and let go.
On the 10th anniversary of our son Silvan’s brief life, my husband and I wanted to do something special. Each year, we’d struggled. Should we celebrate his birth or death? Were these days of celebration or of mourning? Or both? Each year was different. Often, we’d end his anniversary days simply by sitting on his memorial bench in our backyard. We were so busy raising subsequent children that it seemed enough that we had this bench where we could speak Silvan’s name as a family.
But 10 years from the 38 days of Silvan’s life, Miles and Ivan are six and eight. Though we’ve never hidden Silvan from them, though they’ve spoken for years of his death with the natural ease of children, death has changed for them. It’s scarier now because they’ve realized it’s permanent. Death happens to real people, to people they love, and not just to an older brother they never met. But as death becomes scarier and more complex it’s just as important to acknowledge it—both for them and us.
On the 10th anniversary of our son Silvan’s brief life, my husband and I wanted to do something special. Each year, we’d struggled. Should we celebrate his birth or death? Were these days of celebration or of mourning? Or both? Each year was different. Often, we’d end his anniversary days simply by sitting on his memorial bench in our backyard. We were so busy raising subsequent children that it seemed enough that we had this bench where we could speak Silvan’s name as a family.
But 10 years from the 38 days of Silvan’s life, Miles and Ivan are six and eight. Though we’ve never hidden Silvan from them, though they’ve spoken for years of his death with the natural ease of children, death has changed for them. It’s scarier now because they’ve realized it’s permanent. Death happens to real people, to people they love, and not just to an older brother they never met. But as death becomes scarier and more complex it’s just as important to acknowledge it—both for them and us.
We decided to mark Silvan’s 10th birthday with a hike. A silent hike. When Miles and Ivan balked at the idea of silence, we asked for just one minute of silence for each year since Silvan had been gone. Still, they resisted. “Ten minutes?” they said in tragic voices. But within a minute, something changed. Our senses opened. We spotted a flock of wild turkeys up ahead. We tasted miner’s lettuce from the side of the trail. In a stand of eucalyptus, we listened to the squeak of trees rubbing limb to limb in the wind. It felt right. By taking time for Silvan, our own lives were being enriched. And that’s when the boys gestured at my camera. Without words, they posed together. They looked back at me with love. And then, the ten minutes over, they asked if we could hike like this for Silvan again.
Excerpt from Holding Silvan: A Brief Life
If I’m lucky, I think, someday I’ll have children who will know about death. They will puzzle over birds who crash into our windows and lie broken-necked on the stairs. They will know that chicken comes from chickens and beef from cows. They will study the glassy eyes of fish at the market. Sometimes they will be the ones to kill things themselves and ask if they are really dead. They will keep a pet snail in a cage for too long and when they find it foamy and tucked tight in its shell, they will cry the way I cried over pets as a child and then be relieved when they take it outside to see it revive and creep away into a shelter of dead leaves. They will know that many people I have loved are dead and that the real dead stay dead. (Page 180)
~ From Holding Silvan: A Brief Life by Monica Wesolowska Copyright c 2013 by Monica Wesolowska. All rights reserved. All rights not expressly granted herein are reserved by the author.
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