Fast Forwarding and Rewinding

When Lily was born, when I held her precious tiny body in my arms... she was so silent... so still... my tears spilling out on cheeks that would never feel her own tears.

It's almost like in that moment of reveling in newborn goodness, baby girl sweetness and purity, I could picture Lily as an old woman.

I held her, this being so fresh from God, and in my mind's eye, the movie reel of her life played out... only, it didn't go forward, but backwards. Instead of holding my baby girl dreaming of what will be, I held my baby girl and dreamed of what never will. I ached over the life that wouldn't be lived out. I ached over the childhood lost, the babies and grand-babies of her own that she'd never hold. I saw all these events and memories of the full type of life that only someone elderly could understand. I saw them going backwards, fast forwarding and rewinding at the same time. Erasing what never will be in the first place.

But still my heart and my mind saw the movie of her life play out. My mother heart naturally somehow knew at least to some extent what could have been, what I dreamed would have been. The life she would have treasured even long after I was in the ground.

It reminds me of a poem by Tricia Richards on stillbirth in which one line she writes, "We cannot remove the shroud of death that holds you still."

The shroud of death held her body still in that moment. It holds her body still in this moment nearly 8 years since her birth. It holds what might have been still, frozen on could-have-would-have-should-haves. 💗

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