Memorial Service

(On the day of the memorial service... 04/29/07)

Sweet baby --

Nothing in my life has made me more brokenhearted than losing you. You were here for a moment and gone the next. I feel so guilty for losing you. I feel so guilty that my body didn't work to bring you life. I feel so guilty that my body became sick and ended your life. I feel guilty that I didn't bond with you enough, and angry at myself that I bonded with you too much. I feel so stupid and embarrassed for telling people about you and letting them watch me be hopeful about you, and yet so thankful that they have been touched by your life and able to support us as we feel so destoyed. I am so mad at myself, and mad at God for not doing more, and mad at the Devil for doing too much, and mad at the world for having babies and hating babies and loving babies and leaving babies when all I want is you. I would give anything or go through anything to hold you again, to hear your cry, to change your diaper, to feed you carrots, to complain about how you're keeping me up all hours of the day and night. I would do anything to have you home with me.

I wish even that I'd had a few more days -- even just a few more hours -- to know you would be dying and to feel you alive inside of me. To enjoy your little kicks and to let daddy feel them again instead of being so afraid and laying so still so your little life could be saved. Everything happened so fast. I wish so much that I would have taken more time to lay down and absorb every little kick and every little flutter and roll instead of staying so busy all the time. I was afraid to feel you because I was afraid to love you because I was afraid to lose you. My worst nightmare has come true.

And today we have your memorial service. I am so grateful to have it because the children need something tangible to have and to let go of. I am so grateful to have it because I need you to be real to everyone else. I am so grateful to have it so we can celebrate your life, and all your features, and your heart that beat for two hours. But I don't want to have it. I don't want you to be dead. I don't want people to stare at us and to think just like I think that my body is a baby killer. I don't want people to treat us like we have the plague. I don't want people to look at us and look away. I don't want you to be gone and I don't want life to return to normal -- whatever that is. I do not want to say goodbye. I really, really wanted more than anything to bring home a baby and not a box with an urn and baby ashes.

I am so scared of tonight and tomorrow when people stop caring and stop calling. When people rush in and out to drop off their obiligatory meal and return to their busy life unriddled with pain.

Today is very difficult, and today I'm very angry and resentful. I am thankful we planned your service when our hearts felt hopeful and this pain had not had time to settle in. I don't know that I would have been so worshipful if we would have waited until today, because today I'm madder than ever. I know in my rational mind that God did not steal you away because it is the thief that comes to steal, kill, and destroy. But why, then, would God allow me to even conceive when he knew that my body would fail -- that my body would kill my baby? Why did he allow us to have you while we were still reeling in the pain from losing Ainsley, to allow us to have some hope that he was restoring us and growing our family, to feel like we'd been given some amazing second chance -- when it would be ripped right out of my womb? Today I feel like God delights in torture, and today I'm hurting so much deeper than I ever thought I could.

I love you so much, Zachary, and I miss you with every nucleus of every atom that forms every part of my entire being. Absolutely everything thing that I am longs for you completely. I do not know how I will survive this pain.

Mommy