May 3, 2019
These are the words I mustered to share at the service held to mark her short time with us.
Ah Baby Girl,
How is it that the
unspeakable has happened and you are gone from us?
We are flattened by the
devastating power of our love for you pulsing forward into the cold emptiness
of your horrifying absence. Every tear
is a scream against the vicious void that shocks us awake each day now, since
that day you were delivered to us silent.
This we did not see
coming.
But sweet baby Evelyn
Hope, you need to know this.
You have rocked our world
and we are forever changed. Perhaps in
the brevity of your time with us there is a mystic distillation of your spirit,
granting you in the nine months of your growing hidden, and the less than 24
hours we had you in our arms, the same profundity of impact that takes the rest
of us a life time to realize, if we live intentionally enough.
I’m so glad I had the
chance to hold you. Your Momma loved you
strong and brave even in her heartbreak, to deliver you to us so we could meet
you. And I held you and sang to you,
letting you know that this is not the way I want things to be, or I’d be with
you now.
And now what? How do we live like this? What is to become of these aching hearts
chasing after our phantom child?
I don’t know.
Except. Except.
The ocean of love that
pours out of us for you does not come out of a vacuum. This family already knows how to hold on to
each other in the midst of the unspeakable.
How to love no matter what. How to
watch for all that God wants to do redemptively because of this, because you
were born to us, and then had to go.
You are now part of a
family that loves fiercely, little one.
We will never forget you.
I see you dancing. In my imagination – some might call it a
vision – there is a swish of yellow, like satin soaked in sunshine that catches
my eye off to the right. And I turn my
head and a little girl full of delight grabs my hand and says, “Gramma! Come
dance with me.”
So, I will wait to dance
with you, Sweetie.
Yes, we will dance
together, and none of this will be sad any more.
