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“People assumed the time of waiting was torture,” she says. “But it wasn’t. We had a lot of beauty in it. We had to change our thinking: We weren’t going to get to keep him, but this was our time with him. We think of it as our summer with Gabriel. We took him fishing. We had a family portrait taken. We took him to a baseball game. We picked out his casket. All of those were ways of parenting Gabriel.”
He was born on Aug. 8, 1999 and lived for two and a half hours. During his short life, his sisters and extended family met him and held him and Kuebelbeck’s husband baptized Gabriel himself when it was clear the priest wouldn’t arrive before he died. He was beautiful, Kuebelbeck remembers. “Born perfect, except for his heart,” read the announcement she sent out about Gabriel’s birth and death.
"Robbie taught us to love what we have, when we have it, because time is measured," Steve said in the eulogy he delivered at his son's funeral. "Robbie has taught us to hold on tight — and to let go."
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