Matthew's Milk Bottles

I took down Jien’s milk bottle sterilizer this morning. It has been untouched for the past one month. There was a layer of dust on the top. I wiped it, I opened it and peered inside. It was empty. It will no longer be used. My son does not need it anymore. His milk bottles have been put away too. I put them in a plastic bag and in a nice paper bag, and leave it next to the ironing board in the storeroom, and I don’t know what to do with it. But I leave his pacifier in a container in the kitchen cabinet, above the microwave. I want to keep it there, as it has always been there. I don’t know why. He only uses the pacifier when he needs to go to sleep. And he knows it is sleep time when he sees the pacifier, or he will take my hand and lead me to the kitchen, and point to the kitchen cabinet, to tell me that he wants his pacifier as he is sleepy already.


I cried as I pack these. I cry as he is no longer here, and hence, he no longer needs them. I cry of the memories of me washing the milk bottles every night, after he has slept, so that all will be nice and clean and ready for me to give him his milk first thing the next morning. I cry because he will not grow up to be weaned off drinking milk from a bottle, to be weaned off his so-very-needed pacifier. I cry as I took the photos of his sterilizer and milk bottles and pacifier, and his Bob the Builder water bottle. He likes that water bottle and we’ll take that to the playgroup, to the park, etc. Why did I take the photos? So that I will remember all the little and tiniest details of everything of him.

In ten years, I want to read this blog, and click to the year 2008, the year that I started this blog, the year that my son went to Jesus, and the year (and the subsequent years) of how Marcel and I cope with it. I want to see Jien’s Bob the Builder water bottle, his pacifier, etc. That he was with us for such an enriching 30 months, of how he had dominated every part of us, of how much we love him even though I want to tear my hair out some days as he’s such a challenge to care for, and so much to love him for.

All of my son’s things; his clothes and his toys and his books, are still as they are. I can’t bear to move them, yet. When? I don’t know. I open his clothes drawers, and take out a shirt, and put it to my face and draw a deep breath. A breath of him? I don’t know. A life extinguished, a little petite 2 feet 8 inches boy reduced to ashes, the baby that I bore in my womb for 9 months and held to sleep every night of his life. Faith that he is in heaven, Faith that he is happy where he is. Faith is what gets us through. If not for Faith, what else have we to hold on to, and to hope for …