Gone Girl

There’s not protocol to follow when your baby dies.  A year ago we sat around the room, all of us who had spent so many middles of the night with her.  We took turns holding her body, even though the little girl in her was gone.  We whispered in her ear, stroked her cheeks, snipped her hair.

There's no good way to mark the date of your child's death.  Tonight we huddled around a table, a few of the people who loved her most, a small fraction of the folks who must have been thinking about her today.  We ate and drank and toasted and shed tears.

She is gone, and so with her, some of us.  Not us entirely, but the part of us that left the room with her last year.

We appreciate your messages and your shared memories, we appreciate you remembering her today.  Thank you.  
And please, bring her up again later too, because fear of her being forgotten feels somehow worse than living through her death.
JEB