Letter to Ada

Dear Ada,

It's been over 10 months now since we said goodbye. I still think about you every day, and I miss you all of the time. The holidays were so hard without you, especially Christmas and Mother's Day. The 4th of July was one of my last days with you, and I'm afraid it's going to be really hard too. Whenever I see a baby around the age you should be, I wonder... What would you look like now? How big would you be? What new and exciting things would you be doing? What would our family be like if you were here?

I still miss you and cry for you, but the grief has gotten easier. You have a new sister on the way, and I am as excited about meeting her as I was about you. Sometimes that makes me feel guilty. Sometimes I'm afraid that I'm too happy and that I'm slowly forgetting you. I know that will never, ever, happen. Yet, it is harder now to remember all of the details. I can still remember all of my senses - the smell of your skin, the feel of holding you and touching you, the sight of your beautiful face and tiny fingers and toes, the sound of your silence and of your parents' cries. These memories are just a little bit fuzzier now though, and I don't want to lose them. I don't even want to forget the horrible pain and heartache of losing you. Soon after you died your dad and I cried together and we both felt that we didn't want the pain to go away because it would be like your memory was going away. Last night we talked about that again and realized that the pain IS fading, or at least it's duller now. We realize this is inevitable as times passes, but it's sad to us that life is moving on and you're not here anymore.

Sometimes I tell myself that I know you would want me to be happy. I do believe that's true, but then again, I don't know that! I never got to talk to you, so how on earth am I supposed to know what you would have wanted? I don't know what your favorite color would have been, if you would have loved the taste of mangoes like me, or if you would have been extremely stubborn like your father. How am I supposed to know what you would have wanted me to do? But, I can guess, and I can assume, and I do assume that you would want us to be happy. It just feels so wrong sometimes to be happy without you here.

But yet, you are still here in your small ways. A couple of weeks ago I got a frame and put your footprints in it out in the living room so everybody can see your precious tiny feet. I read recently that a mother keeps small pieces of her children's DNA in her body for the rest of her life, and I love this thought. I love the fact that there is some tiny piece of you still inside of me. It's comforting. Right after you died, we got so many flower arrangements and our house was full of this wonderful smell of flowers. I have no idea why, but lately I've smelled that same smell fairly often for the first time in nearly a year - something must be blooming like it did last summer. I breathe in deeply whenever I smell it because it reminds me of those days when everybody was talking about you and remembering you.

I just miss you so much, and I want you to know that. Time may be passing and the pain might be fading slowly, but you're no less important to me. You are my firstborn, my Ada. I love you.

Love,

Mom