When Someone You Love Becomes a Memory, the Memory Becomes a Treasure

In memory of our baby granddaughter, Evelyn Hope

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.