At Harvey’s baby shower, our friends and family wrote blessings for us, for his birth and beyond, and put them in a small box. It has sat on my messy desk the last several weeks. It was in my bedroom while I labored, I have debated putting it in the bag of his things, hand and foot prints, hat he wore, all of our sympathy cards, some photographs, but it just didn’t seem right to mingle his before birth things with his after death things. At least not this box. So, I have picked it up, moved it and set it down several times. Tonight, I tidied up his altar, lit his candles and remembered that my cousin sent him a quote as part of her blessing. I knew it said something about angels, so I opened the box.

I unfolded the first paper, known to be hers and read:

“It has been said that , “Babies are a link between angels and man.” Little one, you come from some great angels and are entering into an amazing family.”

I placed this paper on his altar and noticed another piece of paper folded in the box. The blessing sent from Harvey’s Grandmother from a Jewish naming ceremony she attended, ended like this:

“And now the angel says, “I have given [babies] all that an angel can. I have given them a song, and a smile, and feet to dance, and a sensitive hand, and a tender heart. Now I shall give them this prayer: As they have been blessed, so may they, through all the days of their lives, bestow blessings upon others.””

Below that I came to the small, rectangular folded papers of blessings written by those in attendance at his shower. I had arranged them so that they were in a stack, gently folding in on itself as they were all once folded in half. I could read on the top paper, in my best friend’s unmistakeable script:

“I love you.
And so do all
your angels.”

I read through all of the papers. The well wishes, the blessings, the words of encouragement, of welcoming, of excitement of love. But none others mentioned angels. Just the three on the top.