If Only I Had Told Her
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Read between August 25 - August 27, 2025
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It’s not like Brett and I instantly become friends. But we talk about how we never used to believe that we would die. About how easily bodies can break.
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tell Brett that around a mouthful. And about how I don’t want to forget. “You won’t,” Brett says. He looks directly at me from across the table, his food forgotten. He’s so certain. “You won’t forget. You’ll never forget,” he says.
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“Someday,” Brett says, “you’ll think of Finn, and it won’t hurt. It’s not that the hurt ever goes away. You saw me today. But sometimes? Sometimes when I remember Todd, I’m just happy that I got to be his brother. Someday you’ll have that with Finn. I know it.”
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But I can handle it. I’ll do it for Finn, not instead of him.
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As I push the mower, I think about how the leaves above my head would soon be changing color and falling, and he won’t see it. He won’t see the new leaves in the spring.
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“I was pretending it was Finny mowing,” she says, as if this should have been obvious to me. “And now you’ve ruined it.”
abby
Oh autumn
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I don’t have room in my head for her grief and my own.
abby
Real as hell
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“I should have said something,” I say. “I saw Autumn last week, and I could tell she wasn’t okay.”
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“What if she tries it again? Statistically, there’s a good chance of that.”
abby
Bruh
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“There’re always things that we could have done differently. What matters is what we do now.”
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“I’m pregnant,” Autumn blurts out.
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“I’m going to need people to tell stories about Finn, and I’m going to need a copy of every picture you have.”
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“Are you sure Sylvie will still want me alive when she finds out I’m having Finny’s baby?” “I mean, I don’t think she’s going to throw you a baby shower or anything, but she isn’t a monster. So yeah, when Sylvie eventually finds out, she’s going to want you to be healthy, happy.” I shrug. “Just know that you have a lot of people who care for you. And everyone, fucking everyone, who loved Finn wants you to be okay too, okay? Even if something happens to this baby. Stay alive.”
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When she hugs me goodbye, it doesn’t feel like goodbye. It feels like hugging Finn. I know now that she’s going to be part of my life for a long time.
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I’m so, so grateful that Finn was once alive and that I got to love him. That he got to love and be loved. And be loved still.
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“They really are that small,” Aunt Angelina says, and I’m back in the store. Finny is dead. He was always dead. It was only briefly in my mind that he was alive again.
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I’ve accepted this new reality without Finny, yet I can’t stop myself from thinking about him. And when I do? There he is. My Finny. “Autumn.”
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Everything having to do with this baby reinforces the fact that Finny’s not here. For all of us. Yet we want this. I want this. He would want this. But that doesn’t make doing this without him any easier.
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If I had known. If I had only known.
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“I won’t,” I say. “For a little while, I thought being dead might be better, but that was before the baby.”
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“Angelina and I will give you all the support in the world, I can’t overstate that. But you still have to want this and want it for yourself. Not for me, not for Angelina or for Finny, but for you.”
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“I think I’d be a better parent if Finny were here.” “But we’ll never know,” my mother says. “Especially since you think you wouldn’t decide to be a parent if he were here.”
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“When this child is alive and breathing in front of you,” my mother says, “I promise you will love it. And you won’t care about what you would have done under different circumstances. Children have a way of making you live in the present.”
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“Finny really is dead. I’m not imagining that.”
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wanted to have another, and now I can’t, because I obviously can’t wait in line behind the girl whose boyfriend I slept with right before he died.
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“Finny was proud of me,” I say. “I can’t wait to read it.”
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“Autumn, she is a survivor.” His voice lands heavy on the last word. “Of what?” I ask. “Everything,” Dr. Singh says.
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Sometimes babies die in their sleep for no reason, and with a gasp of breath, I realize that someday this baby will die. Hopefully, this baby will live for a hundred years, but someday it will die, just like Finny. Just like I will. The best I can do is hope that I will die before the baby. The absurdity of it all.
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“It probably will be,” she says, but nothing more, because she knows that for eighteen years, Angelina believed that Finny would outlive her. She knows that sometimes babies die in their sleep. And neither of us is foolish enough to believe that lightning doesn’t strike twice.
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All you can do is teach ’em to brush their teeth and love themselves.”
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All I ask is that today, you stay for this lunch and tell me about my son.”
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“She told me that she understood what I meant about looking back and knowing I was lying to myself about Phineas, because when she looked back, she always knew she was standing in the way of you two.”
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I’ve been feeling our baby move, Finny.
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There was a bit of Finny still in me when he died, and it wasn’t until after he was gone, sometime as I was weeping and screaming, some moment when my soul was crying out for his, that Finny’s child started to form within me.
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This baby isn’t what’s left over from our love story. This baby is our story’s continuation. I feel that flutter within me and look back at the screen to see if I see movement, but what I see is a heart.
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because Finny and I are having a daughter, and she’s probably going to be fine. Probably.
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I have to get used to the sight of things that Finny would wish he could see, because I’ll hopefully, probably, be seeing our daughter for the rest of my life. There is a small hole in her heart.
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She and I have both agreed that we’ll be there in case he breaks her heart too.
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Something is happening with Sylvie and me.”
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I know that there will be days when it feels like there won’t be a future. But for today, I can feel how Finny is still with me.
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