Ten years.
There are some dates on the calendar that never become ordinary, no matter how many years pass.
On August 2, 2016, our Carlin Jameson was born still at 40 weeks. His parents, Tyler and Caitlin, were only 26 and 21 when they experienced a loss no parent should ever have to understand.
There was a life they had prepared for. A baby they already knew and loved. A future they had imagined. And then there was the unimaginable task of leaving the hospital without him.
A year later came Hollyn.
I watched Tyler and Caitlin carry that pregnancy differently. They loved her completely, but they also knew something they hadn’t known before—that loving someone doesn’t guarantee that you get to keep them. They held hope and fear together, and they held her very gently. In many ways, I think they have continued to do that throughout her life.
Every year on this day, I share a picture of Carlin’s tree.
His ashes were laid to rest beneath it, and through the years I have watched that tree grow and change. Some years it has been full and beautiful. Some years weather has been hard on it. Each August, it looks a little different than it did the year before.
So do all of us.
But it remains.
And perhaps that is why this photograph has become such an important part of remembering him for me. I don’t need Carlin to have lived a long life for his life to have mattered. I don’t need to imagine who he would have been at ten years old to know that his absence has occupied a real place in our family for ten years.
He was here.
He was Tyler and Caitlin’s son before August 2, while they waited for him and planned for him and loved him.
He was their son when he was born.
He was Hollyn’s brother before she ever arrived.
And he is my grandson still.
So today I will do what I have done every August 2 since 2016.
I will say his name.
Carlin Jameson Crawford.
Born August 2, 2016.
Loved before we met him.
Remembered every day since.
Happy Carlin’s Day, sweet boy.
Grandma remembers. Always.
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