Name

I love love love seeing Marcellus's name written out. It's such a beautiful name, Marcellus Robert. It's also a name very rich in family ties. Marcellus is my grandpa's name. Robert is Mike's grandpa's name and Mike's middle name. My grandpa is still living, he outlived his great-grandson and never even got to meet him. I often wonder how he feels to have his great-grandson named after him be dead. We were going to use the nickname Marc for Marcellus. Mike's brother's name is Mark. In fact, most of Mike's family does refer to Marcellus as Marc.

There are so many things to grieve with the loss of a child. Included in my grief is Marcellus's name. Sure I can still get things with his name on it and I (and hopefully others) will still use it in conversation. But I'll never get to whisper it in his ear with an "I love you" as he sleeps, I'll never get to teach him how to write it, I'll never see it on his school papers, I'll never shout it out with his middle name included in frustration at him, I'll never see it on any certificates (other than birth and death) or diplomas, I'll never be able to hear it at his wedding, I'll never get to hope he'll pass part of his beautiful name on to his children.

I've asked myself if we knew that Marcellus was going to die, would we have given him that name - the name I love so much and means so much to our families. Yes, we would have. We didn't find out that Marcellus was a boy until the day he was born. We had a girl name pretty set, but were still going back and forth on our boy name. We were pretty sure we wanted some combination of Marcellus, Robert, and Christopher (Mike's dad's name). I wouldn't name Marcellus until I saw him. Because of the c-section and that he had to go straight to the NICU means for five hours he was "Baby Boy Lennon". When Mike came back with pictures of Marcellus right after he was born he really wanted to name him Christopher. I told him we had to wait to name him. As soon as I saw my precious baby boy I just knew he was Marcellus Robert. After spending more time with our son, Mike quickly agreed. It wasn't until a couple of days later we learned that Marcellus means "young warrior." That has affirmed our choice of our son's name. He will always be our young warrior. He IS Marcellus Robert.

To see how beautiful Marcellus's name is written out, check out his memorial post here from "Christian's Beach" If you go to the homepage you can see the names of other babies and children gone to soon written in the sand of a beach in Western Australian. At first I kept comparing Marcellus's sunset to that of some of the other children. I even thought I liked a few of the other ones better. On the website under the FAQs they state "We like to believe that the children themselves choose the time and the sunset that their names are written under. We believe the sunset you receive is the sunset your child has given to you." The more and more I looked at Marcellus's sunset, the more I knew it was just that. It is definitely a Marcellus sunset, a sunset he created just for his mommy and daddy. It is so perfect and when I look at it I just get the feeling of Marcellus. 


"Christian's Beach" is run by Christian's mom, Carly. The main webpage is Carly Marie Project Heal. She has many resources there, including some for friends and family. She's also has a facebook page where you can keep up with all the amazing things she does. We are able to purchase a high resolution file of Marcellus's sunset to support Carly in her mission to continue to help bereaved parents. We will definitely be hanging this on our wall. It is so beautiful! Thank you Carly for all your wonderful work.

Marcellus Robert, you have such a beautiful name. I hope you love it as much as Daddy and I do. I can't wait to shout it out to you on the day we see each other again. You are our brave young warrior. Thank you for the gorgeous sunset. We know you made it just for us. Love and miss you like crazy! xoxox