This is my letter to my girl, who never wrote to me. . .

In graduate school for Fine Arts, I was taught how to write. One way to write well is to tap into your deepest, strongest emotions, and I’d often play with the prospect of fear. What’s one of the worst pains I could imagine? From this premise, I wrote a story about a couple struggling with infertility, a journey that tore a rift into their loving relationship. Finally they conceive, but the baby is stillborn. I went to a dark place in my mind when I wrote that piece, but I could escape it; it was fiction after all, and I could go back to my normal life believing that I’d never live the nightmare that I wrote. But once in a while, our own foresight surprises us.

This is the letter I wrote to Thi across the past month, that I read at her memorial service.

*****

Dear Thi,

It’s your Mama. Words are my profession and my passion. And yet this is one of the most difficult things that I had to write, because I keep failing at finding the right words to capture both my grief at your passing, and my love for you.

Ever since I've wanted children, I've very badly wanted a daughter (no offense, Luc). My bond with my mother makes me yearn for a little girl of my own to dress her up, braid her hair, teach her how to cook alongside me, share funny stories and heartfelt memories, model for her how to grow up strong. Your father and I tried for 18 long months before we were able to welcome your big brother into our lives, so it was such a blessing to bypass all that heartache when we discovered that you were on your way to join us, such a quick surprise. When I peeked at my pregnancy test, I couldn’t believe my luck; I thought I had won the lottery.

You gave me a run for my money from the start, Thi. Whereas I felt close to invincible when pregnant with your brother, I was constantly sick and nauseated with you. I tried to appease you with ginger candy and my all-time favorite, junkie craving—chips. I’d endure my long commutes from work eating chips I bought from the gas station.

We decided to do a “restaurant reveal” to find out if you were a boy or girl. On Mommy’s birthday, Daddy booked a nice seafood restaurant, and we gave a secret envelope to the waiter to reveal the surprise with dessert. When the strawberry sundae came with the words, “It’s a Girl!” written on the plate, it was one of the happiest days of my life. Now, I had won the lottery AND inherited a Nigerian prince’s fortune. A little girl to complete our family, to be born in the Year of the Dog, a sign loyal to family. I was living a dream, a perfect life.

Weeks and then months passed, and you were growing very well. Every time they hooked me up to check out your heartbeat, I’d hear it thumping away, so strong.

 Culturally, it’s frowned upon to make much fanfare out of announcing a baby’s arrival, and you’re not really supposed to buy baby things to stock up before the birth. But I was proud of you from the very beginning, my little girl, and I paraded you around for the world to see. Your Uncle Johnny helped us take maternity photos, our perfect family basked in the light of a warm autumn morning.

 We celebrated Thanksgiving and then Christmas together with all your grandmas and grandpas. Even now, I look back on those pictures with mixed feelings: sadness that you have gone, but happiness that once upon a time, we were able to embraced you in such love.

 The day after Christmas, Daddy had taken special time off work to meet you again. We went in together for your 20-week ultrasound expecting a feisty little baby kicking and moving around on the screen, but you were curled in on yourself, so still, and the doctor confirmed that she couldn’t find a heartbeat.

We named you Thi Aracelli Sen. It means, “Poem of the Altar of the Sky,” a celestial-themed name so I can always remember you as I look up at the heavens and think of you.

In the two nights I spent before I was called into the hospital to be induced, I kept thinking of how these were the last nights we’d spend together as a family of four. As winter winds coursed coldly outside, at least you were still inside me, safe and warm.

Your brother Luc always mentions you at night. He’d constantly say, “Baby” and “Em” (little sister) as he kissed my ballooning belly. Then he’d fall asleep pressed against me with his warm little hand on my stomach to bid you goodnight. If I could bear the grief for my one living child, I’d gladly do so, and though my heart breaks with twice the pain when he mentions you, I’m comforted that in his innocence, he is spared. My emotions are at war—joy for the one that made it, sorrow for the one that didn’t, ineffable love for them both.

A hollow grief visited me the night after I delivered you, Thi. Sweet sleep with all its generosity had stolen away with stealthy wings. Deep is my love for you, but deeper my despair. My baby girl is gone where I can’t follow. Your bare little feet, too small to be bound in shoes, must pace their unsure way to lands I’ve never been.

I’ll never hold your hands as I did with your brother, one step at a time until he found his way.

They said you turned to liquid overnight after I wrapped you up in your hospital blanket and let them take you away. I cradled you, so small in the palm of my hand, and played you lullabies my shaky voice could not be entrusted to sing. Your father, head hung over, said a last farewell. You were a tiny babe only half-formed, stolen forever in eternal sleep.

Cold is your journey, my intrepid little traveler. May all the lost babies beckon with warm voices to light your path. You’re gone now, and this well of dark grief remains like a heavy stone I’ve swallowed whole.

I hope that from afar, you can still feel the depths of a mother’s love.

What does it feel like to leave my baby behind? To drive away from the hospital knowing that you laid waiting in the cold room as we were swallowed by this void? There aren’t the words for me to describe this longing. You were too small for me to keep a lock of your hair or a keepsake of your hand or footprints. I clutched your memory box to me in place of you, empty except for my hospital ID bracelet. In time, I hope to fill it with memories.

In the days following my homecoming, I had trouble making sense of things. Why had Christmas passed, and it’s now the first day of a new year? This earth keeps spinning, and I am thrown off its axis despite its slow rotation. I did trivial chores, cleaning out the clutter of old receipts. I kept looking at the dates as I backtracked through time, wondered what I was eating or doing or buying, what insignificant thing was I caught up with on the day and in the moment my baby died? Did I think of you at all on that day? Talk to you? Touch my stomach to let you know I love you? Or was I clueless and busy, going through life with a false sense of security, thinking everything would be alright, and that I was somehow to be spared this type of grief?

Life without you is punctuated with cruel reminders. In the early morning hours, subtle movements in my tummy—my organs gradually shifting back into place, or gas roiling through—would feel like fetal movements, another way the mind plays cruel tricks on the heart. I’d often subconsciously touch my belly, feeling your phantom kicks. Functioning on auto-pilot, I’d stagger awake to warm up Luc’s morning cup of milk, my womb contracting as it remembered what my arms already knew: that it was now empty of a baby to nurture and cradle and love.

There are many things I wish. That I could hear the words, “I love you, Mama” from your lips. That I could hold you for another day and sing you to sleep after the sun goes down. That I could feel your warm hand on me, look into your eyes, stroke your hair. That I could go back to the day of your 20-week ultrasound, and that it would be completely different. Your grandmother would hear your heart beat strong and see you wiggle around on the screen. We’d drive from the clinic with pictures of you, and we’d go about our lives, complaining about having to return to work after the winter shutdown, and meet you in the summer, fully formed, crying your first breaths of this earth’s air. But these things are not to be.

Those of us who go through this often say they don’t feel strong. I’ve reached out to friends who have gone through the same thing, telling them how strong they are to have gone through this and come out the other side. They suffered one or multitudes of losses, and yet they came out of each loss with a greater sense of empathy, generosity, humor, and love; it gives me hope for clawing out of this darkness myself. They never see their strength. I don’t see mine now, days when I lie in bed for the umpteenth hour, even though I have the physical capability to get up and do things. Maybe one day, Thi, you will show me my strength as well. The grief is deep, and sometimes I could not find the bottom to give myself leverage to climb out. I seem to be falling forever, but then I hear the voices of friends and family beckoning to me from better, lighter times, and I will follow this sound like a guiding thread from my sadness.

It gives me hope too, that you have received love from all over the world, people who think of and remember you. This thought fills me with such an incredible hope that the human heart can endure this and still come out so generous and compassionate to others.

Dear Thi. One of my favorite memories of us together was one late-summer day when I decided to have lunch close to my former workplace. I ordered for takeout and picnicked at a park table near a townhouse complex. Afterward, I took a walk, meandering along the houses, appreciating the neatly manicured flower bushes and water fountains.

 I used to walk there every day when I could find a quiet moment from work and talked to your brother when he hung heavy in my belly. That day, I had my longest conversation with you, uninterrupted by work or life or Luc wanting my attention. Just you and me, baby girl, and I told you all about my hopes and dreams for you.

So Mommy will say goodbye for now with a modified rendition of one of her favorite poems, achingly haunting with the idea of death, but also with a kernel of hope that the ones we hold dear are never far, and are always watching over us in spirit, with love.

“The Wind on the Downs” (by Marian Allen)

I like to think of you as sweet and small,
As strong and living as you used to be,
Matching my heartbeat, rhythmic as it falls,
Tucked in so safe and warm inside of me.
Because they tell me, dear, that you are dead,
Because I can no longer see your face,
You have not died, it is not true, instead
You seek adventure some other place.
That you are round about me, I believe;
I hear you laughing as you used to do,
Yet loving all the things I think of you;
And knowing you are happy, should I grieve?
You follow and are watchful where I go;
How should you leave me, having loved me so?

We walked along the towpath, you and I,
Beside the sluggish-moving, still canal;
It seemed impossible that you should die;
I think of you the same and always shall.
We thought of many things and spoke of few,
And life lay all uncertainly before,
And now I walk alone and think of you,
And wonder what new kingdoms you explore.
Over the railway line, across the grass,
While up above the golden wings are spread,
Flying, ever flying overhead,
Here still I see your tiny figure pass,
And when I leave meadow, almost wait,
That you should open first the wooden gate.