Sue Orlean Edwards lives in Washington, D.C. Her poem, recited at a recent memorial service in the National Cathedral, is a meditation on the death of her eldest son Vadim in late 2025. An accomplished athlete, artist, musician, and scholar, he was stricken with a rare neuro-immunological syndrome while in his first year at Harvard College, and subsequently he suffered catastrophic hospital injuries which left him with severe brain-damage and on life-support. Although her Vadim was in a state of limited consciousness, able to communicate only through occasional facial expressions and hand gestures, and his prognosis was bleak, she cared for him at home for 13 years until he passed away peacefully one morning at the age of 32.—ed.

To My First Born

When you arrived, you came with gifts for everyone,
light, laughter, and love,
and you wrapped these in all the colors of revelation,
hiding them in endless pockets lined with mischief and joy

And you bounded into every room
Carrying an enormous case of curiosity
Spilling stories so spectacular
that time itself stopped to listen

You convinced us to leave doubt in the shadows
to embrace the wonder and beauty of now,
of possibility and magic,
of life as an unwritten song,

And, you shared your surprises
with a passion that transformed mystery into meaning
And meaning into music

Still, I worried about you,
as mothers often do,
so i collected your milestones to throw at misfortune
imagining I might keep you safe

But the fates mistook your spark for flames
And extinguished your free will with a force
That blew pages of your life into the sky-
Until the whole story of your future vanished
In a stream of consciousness

Thirteen years you waited at the threshold
Separating material from ethereal
A borderland where time had no standing
and the hours merged night and day

You climbed broken and tangled branches
In a smoldering neural forest
To greet the many friends who remembered
You were still here
And you waited to say goodbye
Until I was ready to notice the light of a new day

In the end, it was you who kept us company
Who continued to show us
That even without a voice,
You could still tell a story so illuminating
That darkness itself would step aside and listen

Sue Orlean Edwards

Washington, DC
October 2nd, 2026