Remembering ....

I feel as I start to write this that I have many thoughts swirling around in my brain. As I run in the morning one will twist around and come to the surface. "I need to write that down", and when I get home, something else has swirled to the surface.

A beautifully written post by my dear friend, Kristen, brought this one up. She lost her much loved daughter before she was born, 5 years ago. Kalila would be six now. I never said this to Kris, but I'm sure she felt it, as our kids played on the beach together this summer, I felt someone missing. There should have been two girls almost 6 and almost 7 playing in the sand, rather than just the one. I don't understand why God allows these things to happen but I do know His heart breaks with ours, that it was not in His original plan to have children die. It wasn't in His plan to have any of us die or experience pain, actually, but He did give us that darn free choice...and we used it...sigh.

My dear friend Heather phoned two days ago. It's been 9 years she said. "Nine years?!" I was instantly back to that day. The day that she kissed Sadie for the last time, left her heart with a complete stranger and trudged off to work. It was her first week and she wouldn't have to do it for long. The company was heading for consolidation and she would get a buy out. Sadie had a cold and she didn't like her bottle much...but what else could she do.
She told me she knew something was wrong when her desk phone rang. She thought maybe Kain had broken his arm at school. How could she know her world would stop in that moment?

I still remember where I was standing nine years and two days ago today when my phone rang. When Heather's aunt blurted out, "Heather's baby died!" My brain couldn't process the words but I started to sob instantly. It couldn't be true, not Sadie.
We miss her still, her mother and I. We remember her beautiful smile and the fact that she'd just started to sit. Her laugh bubbled up like a brook when you tickled her chin with her toes. I think she'd be too tall and too thin for her age, like her mom and her big bro. With red highlights in her hair. I bet she'd have skinned knees and be able to run like the wind, much like her crazy mom.

Here she is in one of the last photos taken of her and that's her mom at the age Sadie would be up in the corner....

God has blessed us all with more children but there are some that we can only carry in our hearts. I am waiting for that day when I will be able to see my two dearest friends reunited with their daughters.

Until then....

I remember.