Ten days past my due date -

I just finished our Thanksgiving meal

when I felt the first pangs of childbirth.

After sixteen hours of labor,

Scott William Redfern came into our world -

November 23, 1979.

For sixteen hours I labored to birth him into our family -

Only son . . . only sibling . . . only grandson.

Sixteen hours of labor reaped sixteen years of life.

Today it seems as if those long sixteen hours eclipse

the short sixteen years of life on earth.

Today, Scott, you would be thirty-two.

I strain to picture you as a man

but all I see is your boyish smile.

It is once again November -

and I am once again feeling the pangs of childbirth.

How I long to hold you, my son.

How I long to cradle you in my arms,

to kiss you and tell you how hard it is to once again wait to see you.

How I, too, long to be born again into that glorious eternal rest

where you and I shall be reunited together - forever.

Maranatha!