I finally got the Christmas decorations up this morning and have the Christmas music going.  It's snowing outside and I am overwhelmed by a feeling of melancholy. It has mostly to do with memories of a bitter sweet Christmas almost forty years ago when our fifth child, Richard, was born on this day (December 8), lived to the next day, and then died from the effects of Rh-Factor.

When Richard died, I put every tiny memento I had in a little scrapbook:  birth certificate, death certificate, footprints, bills from the doctor and hospital, sympathy cards from friends, a wonderful poem my mother had written about him, the ribbon from his casket. The hospital took no photos of him at his birth, although I had begged them to remember to do so.

We were in graduate school at Indiana University, were extremely poor, and were unable to afford the trip home to Utah for his burial. We had his body shipped to Salt Lake City where my parents met the plane and had a sweet graveside service for him with family members. They took a couple of snapshots of him in his little blue suit in the tiny casket — those were our only photos of him, though we had held him for a long time after he died and I will never forget his face.
 
The little scrapbook meant everything to me — it was all I had.  I would take it out every Christmas and remember him and pray for him and even talk or sing to him.   But one Christmas, years after we
had moved back to Provo, Utah, I couldn't find the scrapbook.  I looked everywhere with no success. I also could not find it the next year and I felt sick about it.  I prayed fervently to find it.  

With my heart pounding,   I asked him please to not let it out of his hands until I got there.  We drove right to Deseret Industries and asked the manager where Mark was.  He pointed to the back of the store and said, “He's waiting for you; he won't let that scrapbook out of his hands until you get here.”
 
We hurried back to where Mark was and he presented the book to us with a huge grin on his face. I hugged him tight, kissed him on the cheek, and thanked him over and over.  I think most workers there might have discarded the scrapbook as being useless to the store. I was overjoyed to have it back in my hands!  

On Richie's birthday each year, we love sharing our few precious memories of him together.  And now we also remember sweet, innocent Mark through whom a tiny Christmas miracle came about.