Ears to Hear

As I stood in the parking lot of the children’s hospital, moments after the life changing words “severe hearing loss” my mind got stuck on all the words of love my son had never heard. Thirteen and a half months worth of sweet whispers and “I love yous.” Thirteen and a half months worth of messages my heart sought to speak.

Today, Monster has hearing aids, and I’ve wasted no time making up for the months of silence. I say I love you in as many ways that I can, as many times as I can. I tell him he’s good and he’s loved and he’s treasured. I tell him all the things he didn’t hear for the first year of his life.

However months into his diagnosis bedtime is still the part that breaks my heart. Perhaps it’s because just about every “going to sleep” moment of his short life involved a routine that was inundated with sounds. From the Rock-a-bye Baby! U2 album that my husband and I swore was completely necessary in Monster’s ability to fall asleep, to the bedtime stories I just knew were filling him with rich language and imagination, to the prayers for his character and heart for God, all of these rituals were as much for me as they were for him. There was comfort in those sounds, in the routine that sent my son into slumber. For a few nights after we found out he couldn’t hear I still continued to press play on the stereo even though it wasn’t at a decibel Monster could hear. It felt so wrong without it. Too quiet. Too empty.

I think, though, that the larger reason that made bedtime so difficult had to do with the words I had always chosen to leave my son with. Since he entered my life I have laid him in his crib with words that spoke to his worth. We love you. Mom loves you, Dad loves you, Nona and Granda love you. God loves you. You are good and sweet and kind hearted. You are loved so, so much. For thirteen and a half months silence resided where I thought had been powerful words of love.

I wasn’t the only one sending Monster off to dreamland on affirming words of love. Unbeknownst to me, my dad, Monster’s primary caregiver on days that I work, had also spent the last months giving Liam a message of worth before he went to sleep. As he puts it, “The last thing he should know before going to sleep is that he’s good and he’s loved.”

And that right there is why bedtime is still heartbreaking. Monster doesn’t wear his hearing aids to sleep. He is unable to hear anything just before I lay him in his crib. In those last fleeting moments before I leave him for the night silence resounds. We have a new bedtime routine. Now we read our stories and say our prayers and then take his aids out. We go upstairs and turn off the light. And I hold him close and kiss his ears three times. And then we rock back and forth as I continue to say those same words I always said. I know he can’t hear them, but for some reason I can’t hold them in. I can’t bear to not say them. I have to believe, someway, somehow Monster has ears to hear what I need him to know. Maybe his physical ears can’t do that, but I continue to communicate these words of love that hopefully he’ll feel in his depths, words that his heart will hear. For myself, and for him.