by Clint Watkins | Jul 2, 2019 | Fatherhood, Grief, Loss
Author’s Note November 7th, 2018. I have just finished writing this post when my wife, Jillian, calls me to tell me her water broke – ten weeks earlier than expected. Labor has started, initiating the birth and death process of our son, Eli. I share this...
by Clint Watkins | Apr 29, 2019 | Fatherhood, Grief, Hope, Loss
The day had finally come. Three months of anticipation did not make our son’s funeral any less surreal or suffocating. My wife and I had somehow survived the week after returning from the hospital, our lives now reduced to mere existence. Sleepless nights. Colorless...
by Clint Watkins | Feb 18, 2019 | Grief, Hope
Since the day we learned that we would lose our first child, I have cursed the circumstances that forced me to be a bystander as my family suffered. I could do nothing to save my son’s life or protect my wife from devastation. But walking alongside Jillian in the...
by Clint Watkins | Jan 19, 2019 | Fatherhood, Grief, Hope, Loss
After we found out that my wife was pregnant, I began to think about what bedtime routines would be like with our first child. I knew I wanted to sing to him, remembering the countless nights my mom sang hymns at my bedside growing up. A ukulele seemed more fitting...
by Clint Watkins | Dec 10, 2018 | Grief, Loss
We had become a family with a distinct frailty. Destroyed by our son’s fatal diagnosis, hobbling towards the day when his death would ruin us all over again.But Eli’s inevitable loss did not keep us from loving him deeply. We chose our son, so we chose to parent him...
by Clint Watkins | Aug 11, 2018 | Fatherhood, Grief, Loss
We did not receive news that our baby did die. That alone would be enough to destroy us. No, we were informed that he will die. Death is tearing our son away from us slowly and surely. But the amputation of our family didn’t seem to be enough to satisfy our oppressor....
