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…
Amelia's Floral Footprints 