Jimmy handed his son to the nurse without tears, and at first it upset Susan. It felt like she was carrying more than her fair share of the grief. But the longer they walked together, the more she understood that Jimmy was carrying as much of the load as she was, if not more. He just carried it differently. Fewer tears, at least that she saw, and more staring out the window and going for walks and sitting quietly alone. But he was there for her in her tears, right beside her. Her tears seemed to draw him, and he became more comfortable with them. She began to believe that there were things you could never know about others until you walked through the deep water together. Through Michael’s death, she realized Jimmy’s silence wasn’t indifference but simply another way of moving through the flood. Some swam. Some waded. Some went under and didn’t surface until they were downstream.

Less than a year later, Susan learned she was pregnant again, and they both believed God was giving them joy amid the sorrow, beauty for ashes. She would never forget Michael and the things she learned through that stinging loss, but life would be different with John David. And she determined she would raise John with a knowledge of his brother.

However, the diagnosis of a genetic defect was the same for their second son. Doctors expected John’s life to be as brief as his brother’s, a handful of days. But Susan held him and rocked him and sang to him and kissed him for a whole week that turned into two and then three. She had long enough with him in her arms to see a little of his personality coming through. The way he crooked his mouth and looked into her eyes, like he could see her soul. By the time he had lived two dozen days, she believed God was going to give more time, that something miraculous was going to happen.

But there was no miracle. And when they gathered at the freshly dug grave with the tiny white casket, it felt like she would never escape the valley of the shadow of death.

Jimmy had said something to her a few weeks after John died that stuck with her. He had again stared out the window and taken long walks alone, processing his grief privately. The empty crib stood as a memorial now and she couldn’t look at it but she also couldn’t stand to get rid of it.

One day Jimmy came up behind her at the breakfast table and put a hand on her shoulder and just stood there as if he were gathering the courage to say what he held inside.

“You know, I think God must trust us a lot to give a double burden like this.”