I sometimes hear it in my mind, an echo of that day nearly a year ago now. 


My baby!


I hear the sobs, too.  Always. 


Andrew is holding me, but he is shaking so badly I cannot tell who is supporting who.  I have him turn her small body towards me so I can look at her from my hospital bed.  Her face is tiny and sweet there in the half dark and I can't look away, willing her to move, to breath.  I try to memorize her features, the shape of those little lips and the upturned nose.  I wish I could see her eyes.  


Later, cradling her in my arms, we take off the hat she is wearing and kiss her soft head, her hair, her ears.  We look at her fingers and toes.  Over and over, I stroke her cheek. 


I don't want to let her go.  The nurses tell us to keep her as long as we want.  To love on her as much as we can.  They knew, though.  Of course they knew it would never be enough.  And as I wondered at the delicate skin of her neck and her earlobes, I knew too.  My daughter was taken from me and this will never even come close to being enough.

I wake each morning now with a stiff and painful elbow and a clenched fist.  At first I took it as another sign that my body is broken too.  Or maybe I am clutching my heart while I sleep, willing it to knit itself back together again.

But now I realize you are there with me in my deepest dreams.  I have my arm bent, cradling you just so to support your head and my hand rests behind the crook of your knees.  I hold you through the night until the day breaks and I have to let you go again. 

My perfect sleeping girl.

I am not myself any longer.  I have changed.  I have told myself and others these words too many times to count.  I have said them in my head, as if to confirm what I already know.  But I didn't realize that calling myself changed is too weak, too inadequate. 


I am not just changed.  Part of me is dead.


And realizing that in the throes of remembering my lost daughter made so much sense, it was almost a relief.  Yes, part of me is dead; that explains the numbness I feel.  I could lay there, my face stiff and cold, and hours could pass without my knowledge. 


And then there is the other half of my heart.  If I am dead for Beatrice, then I am also alive for Imogen. 


It's easy to be in one side or the other.  I can relive every precious moment with Beatrice, weeping for her and all that she lost.  I can lie in bed, detached from myself and the world around me, with no thought but the flickering images of that day back in October.  But I can also smile at Imogen and feel the happiness radiate from her joyful face.  I can hold her, keeping her solid little frame next to me as tightly as possible, savoring each breath I feel her take.


It's easy to be in one side or the other.  It's the line between my death and my life that troubles me, for how can I ever reconcile the two?  How could they ever fit together?  There is no bridge, yet the two sides of my heart shift and grind against the other, one or the other rising to a pinnacle of emotion, leaving me never knowing whether I will be in death or in life from moment to moment.


This line, this rift in my heart, dulls what was once a happy life, blurring the edges of everything sweet and joyful, mixing with it agony and despair. 


Yes, I am alive.  But part of me is dead.

"how do you pick up the threads of an old life? how do you go on? and in your heart, you begin to understand... there is no going back. there some things that time cannot mend, some hurts that go too deep - that have taken hold."

- Tolkien

Beatrice's face is superimposed over every thought I have.  Every thought I see through the watermark of her still face.  I might be looking at you, but I'm not really, its only her face I see.


I flashback to that day we lost her, mostly at night before I fall asleep, moments and voices, fragmented and out of order.  The weeping of my father as he held her for the first and last time; the rock of my childhood, breaking.  My mother looking at her as she does what only comes naturally when you hold a newborn baby, rocking her gently from side to side.  Then to my youngest sister's face before the memorial, the tears free flowing down her cheeks as if she was in the rain without an umbrella.  Imagining my brother's face, not knowing what to say.  Another sister gazing at Beatrice's photo with such love on her face, drinking every detail.  I feel the hands of my other sister, squeezing my own, trying to give me what strength she can, even as she shakes with her own tears. 


I see you, Beatrice.  In my mind, I do see you... as you were, as you will yet be. 
And I do so long to hold you.