Grass must grow and children die

You remember learning a new word as a kid? For some reason, unknown to me, whenever I learned a new word, I kept hearing it everywhere.  Or perhaps you remember being excited about purchasing a new outfit and then seeing it being worn by dozens of people around you. What I feel with Leo's death is similar. Now that I am what they call an 'angel mommy', I see or hear of other angel parents all around me.  

In high school, I wrote a long paper about Victor Hugo, a French poet from the 1800s. I studied his works and his life. I analyzed his poems and read many of his novels. But how is it that I completely missed the fact that out of the 5 children he had, only 1 outlived him? He lost his first child, a son, in infancy. His second child, Leopoldine died at the age of 19. Many of his poems were dedicated to her. And who can say it better than Hugo? (Scroll down for English translation):

Les mois, les jours, les flots des mers, les yeux qui pleurent,

Passent sous le ciel bleu;

Il faut que l’herbe pousse et que les enfants meurent;

Je le sais, ô mon Dieu!

(…)

Hélas ! vers le passé tournant un oeil d'envie,

Sans que rien ici-bas puisse m'en consoler,

Je regarde toujours ce moment de ma vie

Où je l'ai vue ouvrir son aile et s'envoler!

Je verrai cet instant jusqu'à ce que je meure,

L'instant, pleurs superflus !

Où je criai : L'enfant que j'avais tout à l'heure,

Quoi donc ! je ne l'ai plus !

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Months, days, billows of the sea, eyes that weep
pass under the blue sky;
grass must grow and children die;
I know it, O God!

(…)

Alas! turning an envious eye towards the past,

inconsolable by anything on earth,

I keep looking at that moment of my life

when I saw her open her wings and fly away!

I will see that instant until I die,

that instant—too much for tears!

when I cried out: "The child that I had just now--

what! I don't have her any more!"

-          À Villequier, 4 septembre 1847.