Emri

I looked down at him there, all plastic-like with proper embalming. Immediately taken back to the first time I saw him, only three months earlier.
(Pushed for fifteen minutes, and suddenly the doctor was saying, "Lean up, reach down, grab him," and I pulled you out of myself, felt your ribcage expand for the first time to accommodate the sort of scream only an angry newborn can achieve.)
"What a pity," someone says. "He was such a beautiful little boy." And I want to slap her. That was the hospital chaplain, speaking only moments after he was declared dead, even before I allowed the thought to enter my mind (no matter how long I was allowed to hold what was left of you, in your blood-flowered blanket).
And so happy, too. I stretch you out on the couch in front of me and lift your arms above your head and my reward is this: your first laugh. I lifted your arms, and that's all it took. You were so happy, with such a desire to be alive, though you didn't know yet that you were.
I wish I could have told him about death. At least explained the concept, why he would never see me again, why I wasn't holding him when he went (I thought you were sleeping, was sure you would wake up), that I would take his place if I had the option.
No such option exists.
Why did you go? I should have prepared myself for the possibility, but I couldn't bear the thought even then; now the thought is my life. I wish I knew if you died in pain. But what plagues me most is that I could not have gone in your place.