Tag: memorial garden

July 14th…. it was the perfect due date. I know babies aren’t often born on their due date, but yours felt special. Yours felt like it was hand picked just for you. We conceived you one year after we lost my Dad, your Papa… and you were due to arrive just 4 days after his Birthday! I used to think there must be some force, much greater than ourselves, orchestrating all of this… and everything about you made this thought seem much more certain. But when we lost you, I realized how cruel it would be if this same force that gave you to us also took you away… and now I think differently.

Now I’m not so sure if life is orchestrated or if it is just a series of events… some good, some bad… that sometimes align in ways that seem too good to be true. Maybe your due date was just a coincidence… but what a beautiful coincidence it would have been!

Last year your due date was hard. Just like all of the other “firsts” of last year… the days approaching your due date were the most difficult. Your Daddy and I decided to pack up the car with Kilroy and drive to Colorado for the week around your due date. We spent our time in nature, connecting with you through the flowers, and leaving your mark on the world… I felt you in the peace of the mountains… and I felt you in the storm we made it through in our kayak… You were everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

On July 14, 2021 I received a video from many of my coworkers…sharing their beautiful words, sharing how you had changed their lives, and showing their support. Your Daddy and I took Kilroy on a short hike, carved your name into a tree, went to the most wonderful spa for massages, and had a dinner just the two of us. I wrote to you a social media post that poured out from my soul… and the whole day you were on our minds.

On July 14, 2021, while we were at dinner, I also received a message from our OBGYN asking for my help with therapy resources for another patient who lost a baby like we lost you. Another coincidence? I’m not sure. But the timing of this message made me feel as though you and I could begin to change the world.

Today is July 14, 2022 and Amelia, I do believe we are slowly changing the world together. Loving you has lit a fire within me to love you out loud and share our story. What started as loving you and sharing on my social media page to a smaller audience has turned into this blog… which I hope will continue to reach so many others around the world. Together, we have the potential to help others feel understood, less alone, and to spread awareness around baby loss. We have the potential to spread awareness around PPROM, second trimester loss, anatomy scans that can and do go horribly wrong, and choices some Mothers and Fathers must make to induce labor and end the most beautifully wanted pregnancy in order to keep the Mother safe. Maybe someday we can raise more than just awareness and raise funds to study PPROM, why it happens, and help find better ways to prevent this from ever happening in the first place. If only there had been a way to prevent this from ever happening to you… to all three of us- your Daddy, me, and you.

This due date may not be as devastatingly dreadful as our first, but this due date I find myself thinking about what you would be like. If our pregnancy had been routine and things had worked out you would be a bright little 1 year old bringing us endless joy and providing us with endless challenges! You would probably be walking now, have a few teeth, and baby girl, if I could hold you I swear I’d never let you go.

Today I’m thinking about who you would be. I’m thinking about your smiles, your shining eyes, how much joy you’d be finding in this world. Maybe we’d have a splash pad in our back yard for you to stay cool during these hot summer days. Maybe we would have had a 1st Birthday, just the three of us… or maybe more of our family would be visiting to celebrate you big. One thing I definitely know is Kilroy would be enjoying these days, licking food from your fingers as you begin to explore more and more…

I think from now on, for the rest of my life, I will always think about who you would be. Every year on July 14th I will reflect and imagine how life would be if things had worked out. Today, just a year later our life would be so much different… but you would be here and you would be beautiful like the flowers that grow in your garden.

It’s a quiet Saturday morning and this is my view…

The sun is illuminating your young garden in a way that photographs do not do justice and Daisy is in her spot along the back fence waiting for her ball to be thrown (she’s non-stop). I wonder what this morning would be like if you were here…

If you were here it wouldn’t be so quiet, but it would be perfect. Rather than waking up to Kilroy barking at the door and Daisy licking my face I would’ve woken up to the sound of you. I would have greeted you in your nursery to see a smile on your face. You would be just about 10 months old now. Would you hold your arms up for me to lift you out of your crib? Would you have a favorite blanket or “lovey” that you must bring with you to the kitchen? Everything about you- your sounds, your smiles, your chubby little hands and big shining eyes- would be absolutely perfect. Would I realize this if I had never experienced loss? Would I take you for granted if I had never lost you? My perspective was different before I lost you.

In an alternate universe maybe things worked out and we are together. Maybe I’m feeding you your favorite puréed fruit. Kilroy is so gentle now with his age and his cancer… maybe you’re snuggling up next to him helping him feel all the love before his time runs out. I know you would’ve loved him… especially now at 10 months old with your personality and growing independence. Maybe in this alternate universe your Daddy approaches you and your eyes light up because he’s your most favorite person. Oh, I’d love to experience this.

And if you were here I wouldn’t have this view. We wouldn’t have your beautiful memorial garden. We wouldn’t have Daisy. Our backyard wouldn’t look the same… not near as beautiful… but I’d have you.

I’ve tragically lost both my father and my daughter. Losing a parent and a child both bring on a grief that you can only really intimately know once you’ve lived through it… A grief that connects so many of us but that we all wish we didn’t have to know. And at the same time this grief feels incredibly lonely and like you are the only one experiencing it.

When I lost my dad, I was able to locate hundreds of photographs, videos of him, voicemails, text messages, and hand written cards and notes… I have countless memories to remember him by. I know exactly who he was and what he stood for. I know the details of what he looked and sounded like. I had 31 years with him in my life. I have countless people who knew him and loved him and remember him with me.

When you lose your baby you don’t have all of this to remember them by. Even for those babies lost shortly after birth or just months into their lives, there are not enough memories. Since losing Amelia just 21 weeks into pregnancy I have collected anything that can serve as a memory of her… the sonogram photographs, my weekly “bump” pictures, a video of her heartbeat, her footprints, and photographs with her in the hospital… but it’s not enough. I have a Molly bear that weighs exactly as much as she weighed when she was born… but it’s not enough. She rests in a beautiful urn I had hand crafted with care for her… but it’s not enough. I’ll never know who she would have become, what she’d look like, or what she’d sound like. While everyone around us gets the chance to watch their babies grow we miss out on every milestone… every Mamma.. or Dadda… every laugh, smile, cry, and challenge. We miss out on everything… and since our time with her was so short there are not enough ways to remember her. The other difficult part is that although our family and friends love Amelia, they never really got to know her. They didn’t get to see her and hold her like we did and that makes this grief feel more lonely, more isolating… because we are the only ones who really truly knew her… for the brief speck of time that we had together.

So what do bereaved parents do? We develop traditions.

Over the past year we have developed traditions that we can carry out to honor Amelia and remember her when memories are not enough. I always wear a necklace and a ring that have her birth stone… and we have plans to someday have tattoos made for her… but throughout the years we also want to do a little something more.

Traditions we have made so far…

Amelia’s Garden

Every spring we will plant new flowers in Amelia’s garden and watch them grow over the summer months.

Travel & Making Amelia’s Mark

Hiking on her due date last year on July 14, we left her mark on the world. It seems silly but this little thing made me feel like we were leaving a piece of her there for eternity to bring beauty to the trail and I imagined going back out there years later to see her name among the trees. I imagined wild flowers sprouting around this specific tree as if Amelia is saying “I’m here!”

Although we won’t always do something exactly like this, I like the idea of “leaving her mark” somehow when we travel. It may look different for different travel adventures, but somehow we will leave the world a more beautiful place through Amelia.

Photographs of flowers

Whenever I see beautiful flowers growing I will photograph them. Everyone we know with living children has the opportunity to fill their phones with photos of them. Since we cannot fill our phones with photos of Amelia through the years, I am dedicated to photographing every single beautiful flower I see growing around us. She was beautiful like these flowers…

The Wave of Light

October 15 is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. On this day there is something called the Wave of Light… Across the world at 7 pm those of us who have lost a baby light a candle for one hour and this creates a wave of light across the globe through the different time zones. Last October, Brent chose a sweet little candle that we used. It was perfect for her… and we will continue to light it for as long as we shall live.

Amelia’s Birthday

Possibly the biggest tradition of all is Amelia’s birthday. It’s a complicated day because it is her birthday and yet it is also the day we lost her…. the anniversary of one of the saddest and most traumatizing moments of our lives. But it was also one of the sweetest moments…meeting Amelia and holding her…even though she was already gone.

We had a full year to consider how we wanted to honor our baby girl on this day … and while the weeks leading up to it were filled with every emotion possible… we really truly love what we came up with together.

One part of this tradition is her birthday candle. I had ordered this ahead of time and we plan to light it every year on her birthday… in the evening… when we can experience some quiet time for reflection.

This is the other part, which turned out better than we could’ve imagined. In the future, we will continue this tradition, hopefully with less sadness and a growing family…

Each year on Amelia’s birthday we will buy a single pink helium filled balloon. We will write messages for her on the balloon and send it to the sky. Watching her balloon float up and up until we could no longer see it was something truly special. It was another one of those moments where it felt like it was just the two of us and Amelia… and time had stopped around us. It felt like she would be greeted in the stars by the balloon meant just for her. With sweet messages from her family.

(Our messages have been blurred as this is one of those things we want to keep special…between the two of us and our daughter)

While the intention of our traditions is to continue each and every year that we are alive… the beautiful thing is that traditions can evolve and grow each year and with each changing season in our lives. Traditions can outlive us in our families. I am certain that our traditions will continue on and evolve just as our love for our sweet baby girl has and always will. I look forward to keeping Amelia’s memory alive & I look forward to continuing to love her in the ways only a bereaved mother knows how…