This is a piece about loss, grief, the most beautiful boy in all the lands, and ache. If you feel triggered by baby or pregnancy loss, you may not want to read further. I see you, I send you care and comfort, and I wish you easier days ahead. For those who feel able to read about Italy through a deeply personal and emotional lens, welcome.

I wanted my baby boy to have a unique name. Nothing that would be duplicated on an elementary school roll call, nothing basic, nothing without meaning. His dad wanted it to be pronounceable in English, and not too bizarre. A difficult balance. We settled on Nevis: the valley we lived by in New Zealand before we conceived him; the highest mountain in Scotland, the country his third-great-grandpa hailed from; and a sonically beautiful name that is somehow both distinctive and classic at the same time. 

Our sweet Nevis died at five days old. It was unforeseen, a birth accident, a stroke of lightning. My chest tightens as I write this. Anxiety scratches in my stomach. This is not what I want to explore here. This is not the story. 

Nevis had a beautifully round saucer face. His nose and ears had character. He was a big, gorgeous boy, with meaty hands and a variety of chins. He should be on this trip to Italy, a four year-old running paces in front of his little sister and little brother, but he isn’t. Or maybe he is? 

I see him everywhere. His name is a place, and I find him in various places. The letters in his name constellate around me sometimes. I don’t know what it means. I desperately want it to mean something, that he’s out there somewhere—safe, happy—and that we’ll be reunited someday. His name finds his dad and me, in unusual contexts, since we lost him. It found us in a Calgary +15 skyway: a plaque mentioned the hamlet of Nevis, only a two-hour drive away, but a place we didn’t know existed. It found us on our couch in the living room, mere weeks after our son died: a Caribbean gardener showed off his plants on our favorite UK show, and then mentioned where he was born—the country of Nevis. It found us off guard on our phones: an old friend we rarely hear from texted a photo of a street sign he found in his parents’ city—it read, Nevis Close. 

I see Nevis a lot on this trip to Italy. It’s a tour of the north-west, in the fall. We start in Laigueglia, a charming fishing village in Liguria; carry on to wine country in Piemonte; and then ascend into the mountains of Valle d’Aosta.

One afternoon, we drive into the entroterra of Liguria to a beautiful village, Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena. Nevis’s two-year-old sister loves the town’s terraced playground, rocking gleefully on its retro horse spring rider. It’s a particularly gorgeous location, autumnal vines creeping up stone buildings and a gorgeous valley dropping off behind the town, one I later learn is called the Val Neva.

While perusing a map of the Langhe hills in Piemonte, I see a small town called Neive. I know I need to be close to it, so we book an agriturismo nearby. Nevis’s sister has her first white truffle in Neive. She immediately spits it out. Are you seeing this, Nevvie? (That’s our nickname for him.)

In Valle d’Aosta, I weigh different accommodation options and I’m compelled to book the apartment in Hône. Is this town in any of the guidebooks? No. Is one of the Airbnb hosts named Nives? Yes. I query my Francophone friend, “Is Nives a common French name?” She says she’s never heard it.

I don’t expect to enjoy the Valle d’Aosta portion of our trip. It’s nearby, so it makes sense to do some research for my mountain-loving clients, but I myself am not an alpine person. Nevvie, it’s the strangest thing—I love it. It’s mountains, but with delicious cheese, surprising wine, castles, evocative towns, and, most importantly, your name everywhere.

Searching for a hike, I ask Nives’s son, who helps with guests, for recommendations. He tells us about a popular natural park and a rifugio, an experience I’ve recently been interested in, where you hike up to a mountain hut that serves you hearty, traditional food right on the trail. As an afterthought, he casually mentions the Machaby Fort in the nearby town of Arnad. Though the rifugio idea really appeals to me, practically we need something easy and close for the kids, so I start Googling the fort. I blink a few times. “Nevi,” “Nevi,” I keep reading. Beside the fort is a pin: the Santuario della Madonna delle Nevi di Machaby. Obviously this is the hike we’re going on. 

I type Nevi into Google Maps, on a lark. I record the screen as I zoom out and see one, two, ten, no, twenty iterations of Nevis’s name pop up around us in Valle d’Aosta. Cappelle, rifugi, chiese, chiesette, and oratori—chapels, huts, churches, little churches, and oratories—all dedicated to the Madonna delle Nevi. One even has Bisous in the name. Kisses, the most famous mother of a dead son, and my little Nevvie’s name in the mix. Holy shit. 

I studied art about the Madonna in undergrad. I’ve walked by countless paintings, triptychs, and sculptures of her. I used to admire her clothing, the tint of blue, or the features of her face—in passing. Then my son died and I looked at the Madonna with a sort of shared grief, a knowing. We were the same. She lost her son. She lost herself, maybe. Because aren’t they the same thing? When Nevis died, so did I. For a good year. Slowly I’ve been reconstituted, built a life around the aching void. Dragged a safety pin across my skin and actually felt it. But for so long I felt nothing. 

I feel a pull to do this hike—a compulsion, really. I feel it physically, like someone is pulling a cord connected to my chest, a dainty but insistent hand on the other end, maybe the Madonna delle Nevi’s. (Unbelievable. While writing this sentence I look up a synonym for “hand” as in “fist” and find this in my dictionary: “Scottish & Northern English nieve.”) So the Madonna delle Nevi’s nieve is yanking me by the chest to do this Nevis hike. 

It’s a steep old mule track through chestnut forests. I carry my youngest son, seven months old, in a carrier, and my husband holds my two-year-old daughter in his arms. Honestly I don’t know what lies at the top of the track—I haven’t done much research, I’m just following Nevvie’s name—and the ascent is becoming strenuous. Our toddler refuses to walk by herself. I think about turning around, and promise myself that if there’s nothing glorious after the next bend, we will. We round the curve and suddenly we’re there. 

A simple ochre and white sanctuary faces a weathered gray cross made of stone, majestic mountains of the same color beyond. It is a quiet, peaceful spot. We gaze at the frescoes on the exterior, as the building is locked. We look, perplexed, at a set of outbuildings with holes in the floors, until my husband figures out they are likely 17th-century outhouses set over the cliff. 

I take a picture of my daughter looking at a fresco of baby Jesus and Mary, and wonder who she thinks the naked baby is. I take selfies and videos with my youngest son, rugged mountains with scraggly green forest in the background, wind whipping my hair and making him blink his long eyelashes repeatedly. I wonder if I’ll raise kiddos who continue to pilgrimage to their older brother’s places. I hope so, but, then again, I hope not. I don’t want to burden them with obligation and heaviness. I don’t want my tragedy to cast a pall over their joyous lives. Puffy white clouds slide across the blue sky as the sun casts a warm orange glow over the mountain peaks. White dabs of wildflowers embellish the rich green of the parvis’s grass. Nevvie, your places sure are beautiful. And lonely. 

Neve in Italian means snow. Thus the Madonna delle Nevi (or Madonna della Neve) is the Madonna of the Snows. She is celebrated on August 5, a day in the 4th century CE when a summer snowstorm showed the future site of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Unexpected snow, in the wrong season. That rings a bell. 

Nevis’s last day with us was a beautiful fall day. Leaves changing to yellow, slowly dropping off their branches, and sun streaming through the warm colors. Night fell, we pulled down the blinds, and we said goodbye to the most beautiful boy in the world, our first baby, our Nevis. We cried endlessly, until our arid bodies couldn’t furnish another tear. So did our family, the nurses, and the hospital staff. It was not enough. The morning after Nevis died, someone opened the blinds. The ground was covered by a blanket of white. Fluffy snow was falling. The world was crying for our sweet boy too. The autumn of yesterday and its warmth were gone. Nevis’s loss was simply too great. The sky cried neve.