The death of a baby

A/N: This was wrote in the middle of last year for a college English class. Baby deaths hit me the hardest at my job, and normally writing helps me to work through things I see, experience, etc. After writing this piece, all 100% truth and honest, it all made sense to me. So remember, just because funeral directors, embalmers, and their staff don't always show emotions at work-they all have emotions and they are normally far from being cold. 

His name is one I still remember, and before he ever got to take his first breath and live, he was gone. His mother, a woman who had carried his tiny 16.5 inch body in her womb for eight months, was no older than me and the over-sized band that accompanied his tiny body proved it. From the moment his aunt called, you worked your way into my heart, left your named carved into my mind with the countless others I've dealt with over the years. The one's that have gone too soon. Nothing has changed for me. All of you nearly drive me insane with grief and tears. You all make me hate my job and at the same time appreciate and understand my job more. Even though you're gone, you make me learn to fear. Fear that one day, I too might become your parents and never come back from the loss of losing a child. Babies and little kids aren't suppose to die. You aren't suppose to die. It isn't fair. It isn't right. Do any of you have any idea what your deaths do to me? They kill me. They aren't suppose to. I'm suppose to be stronger than that, but it kills me. I see the grief on your parents faces, and the emotions my boss tries to hide while remembering when he was in the same spot they are and I crack under pressure. I hold it together while I'm at work, but when I am home, that's when the emotions and the toll begins to show. And every time one of you goes, I spend nights crying into my pillow because I don't understand why God is cold enough to do this and when i'm not crying, I'm re-reading Thomas Lynch's words about your deaths. About how your tiny little graves are never big enough to hold all the pain and grief, and how you don't give us memories, you give us dreams. You make me question everything about myself, about my future in this profession and just when I'm back up on my own two feet, you all manage to kick me back down because someone else has died. You do it every time. Always have, always will. You make me lose my mind. Turn me into a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Make me sometimes just want to curl up and hide, pretend that its not happening again. You make me weak until the only thing left to do is to cry so I can recharge. From the very first one, I remember all your names. I can't seem to forget them. I try, but always fail. And when I walk into the prep room and see you lying there on the cold, porcelain embalming tables, I only want to see you breath. Touching your cold skin always brings tears to my eyes and you've  no idea how much I want to pick you up and cradle you in my arms. None of you have been mine, but the moment I see you, you're part of me and I've yet to find any way around that, especially with you. You're the first one he's ever let me take some sort of charge on, at least when it came to picking you up from Metro's morgue. You were so tiny when she brought you out of the cooler, wrapped so small in a blue cotton stretcher sheet. Closing the suitcase and putting you in the dark was super hard, but there was nothing I could do. Removal rules can't be changed no matter how much I want them to. But I never let you go after that. I held the case in my lap the entire way back to the funeral home and into the prep room myself. Laying you out on the cotton upon the table, I was asking "Lurch" to help me through all that.I can close my eyes even at this moment and see you lying there in front of me. You were so tiny and so small. Your feet fit in the hollow of my hand. Your entire hand was tinier than my index finger and later when I saw you wrapped up in your blanket with your Simba in your casket, I broke every rule in the book by looking at you, and even then, you held my finger for one brief second before I left, locking your casket for the final time and somehow I was at peace. I don't know how you did it, but it surprised even myself. You're never going to be far from my mind, that for sure will be a given, but I know you'll be somewhere in a state of peace.