Eight years and eleven days ago, my first child was born. A beautiful girl, Lillienne Grace, weighing 5 lbs 12 ounces, arrived in this world at 7 o'clock on a Friday evening.
Eight years ago, my first child died.
How do you squeeze a lifetime of parenting into eleven days? A lifetime of love, care, fear and joy.
The simple answer is: you don't. Instead, you begin a journey of learning how to parent the dead.
In the past eight years, I have parented Lillienne by:
Loving her (does she know my love?)
Singing to her (can she hear me?)
Celebrating her - with birthday cakes and picnics, flowers on her grave for special occasions, acquiring meaningful things to signify her place in our family and in my heart (like a painting of lily flowers) (does she bear witness to these events?)
Missing her (does she miss me too?)
Dreaming of her (does she dream of me too?)
Feeling her in my empty arms (does she feel my arms around her?)
Telling her story and publicly acknowledging her (does she know how proud I am of her?)
Imagining her future, wondering how my little girl would (will) grow into a woman (is she still a baby, or a little girl of eight years now?)
Protecting her from a harsh world, protecting her memory, and never allowing my anger to tarnish my love for her (does she feel safe? is she cold, wet, hot or parched lying in her earthly bed?)
And I continue to long for any opportunity to do these things, and to grow as her mother, to find more and better ways of letting her know that she is forever a part of me, always loved, never regretted.
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