One More Stillborn

I've been home for ten days waiting for the river to go down and the sun to dry the land. I have been looking for a home, a cheap car and sorting out my goods. I had hoped to be back on the river as soon as I could.
Yesterday, Lorrie wasn't feeling good and did not go to work. Mike came home early from the Food Lion and they went to see her doctor in the early afternoon. At three I sent a text message to her because I was worried. Lorrie has had tiny spottiness and a hematoma had been visible on her last ultrasound. No answer. At five, I called Mikey, but only got his voice mail. At six he called back and told me that they were at the hospital and that the doctor was inducing labor because the baby was dying in Lorrie's womb.
I had been prying that they would all be fine, but not I started reminding Daddy that he had promised to hear me always. My prayer was that the child would be in His hands and that we would be able to see him gathered with all of us. I knew that the baby would not be born with lungs to breathe and could not survive in this world. He had not had time to grow. I sat on the front porch and talked to my Father, to my brother Jesus. Far into the morning, we thought about people as the leaves of a tree and as friends that could come and go but always be a vital part of us. We thought about the tiny souls of so many children that had never been born and of those who had never even drawn a breathe. We saw the joy and the twinkle of their lives so brief here and so glowing in the gathering of us all.
We cried that I would have to wait so long to meet this child and that I had children that I had never yet met. I wondered if the flower seeds planted for a child so small it had no form still grew in New Mexico. I wept for Lorrie and a little for Mikey. She will miss this child and he will remember at least for a while.
In the morning Jammie, Lorrie's mother, called and said that a boy five ounces and seven inches long had been born and died. Mikey and Lorrie had called him Devon Ray. I will morn him and look forward to seeing him when my great spiral on this world is done.