Monday, March 17, 2014

The Sounds of Life Around Us

Dear Ellie,

I don't know how to describe what happened.  I feel like I could go crazy if I don't put my thoughts to some purpose.  It had to have taken more than an hour.  Each minute, we were certain that this time you were gone.

I look at you now and I wonder whether you are still in there.  Inside of that body.  How could any baby go so long without oxygen?  Without the brain being scrambled?

All around us are the sounds of life.  Babies crying.  Staff laughing in a far off pod.  But in your isolette, there is nothing, just the rise and fall of your chest as the ventilator gives you its calculated breathes through a tube down your throat.  You aren't moving.  Your mother saw your eyes open right after the things that went wrong.  They were unmoving.  Unblinking.  Just staring into space.

Did you live only long enough so that we could fall in love with you?  Before the machines failed, I was writing you a story about two children that wander into the woods and find a special place that time cannot touch.  I wish I could find that place.  Find it so that you would be with us forever.

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