When my husband, Joe, and I moved into our first house In May 2014, we spied squash vines growing along a wooden fence next to our driveway. Being new homeowners—and not exactly avid gardeners—we decided to let the vines grow and see what would result. That June, to our delight, we spotted a single pumpkin growing amid a tangle of leaves right in the middle of our driveway. I was seven months pregnant with our firstborn, Nathan, at the time.
Our driveway pumpkin grew impressively over the summer. It was already big and bright orange by late August. My due date with Nate came and went. We waited… and waited.
On Sunday, Aug. 24, Joe and I went to the hospital for a scheduled labor induction. As we drove off we waved goodbye to neighbors who were hosting a block party.
Time at the hospital moved quickly. Nate wasn’t moving around as much as the nurses wanted to see. Doctors were paged. I was rushed into an emergency C-section. Nate was born, silently, at 7:31 p.m., whisked to the NICU, taken by ambulance overnight to a hospital in Chicago for further evaluation there, and then returned to our hospital so that I might have a chance to hold him. He died Aug. 26 at 2:17 a.m. of complications from an arteriovenous malformation in his brain—an aneurysm-like condition that had likely developed early in my pregnancy but hadn’t shown up on my ultrasounds.
It’s difficult to express the heartbreak of losing a child. The sadness, silence and emptiness are profound. This experience challenged my faith. But through the grief-filled months that followed, I clung—as I continue to cling—to something one of my pastors said in a sermon weeks before Nate was born: God doesn’t promise that we’ll never go through storms in life; God promises that we’ll never go through them alone. I see it as a miracle that we had the time with our Nate the Great that we did. At the hospital on his second night of life, we had the chance to change his diaper, read and sing to him, and have him baptized. We will always be thankful for that time. What a humbling privilege to be the parents of such a beautiful, tough baby. Joe and I returned home. A new school year had started. Kids in backpacks walked past our house again. Joe retrieved our big, orange driveway pumpkin and placed it on our porch for all to enjoy for a bit. Our house was quiet.
Two weeks later, on a sunny September morning before heading to a doctor’s appointment, I glanced at our garden. My eyes welled up: Under broad leaves on the driveway, another green pumpkin was growing.
Two years and four days after Nate was born, Joe and I welcomed our son Colin, born with all the feistiness of a younger brother. Each August, our family celebrates “A Day for Nate,” inviting friends to contribute time or resources to an organization they care about in Nate’s memory. Nathan means “he gave.” For 10 years, our Nate and his legacy have given so much to so many. Thanks be to God.
Christy Lafave Grace is communications manager at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church in Naperville, Illinois. An Indiana University journalism graduate and a longtime business editor/writer, she now writes (and runs) in and around Naperville
This article appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Gather. To read more like it, subscribe to Gather.