Dearest Baby Girl

This is my first story up here on Wattpad. I do hope you enjoy this story, so please show your support by voting and/or commenting. Also, if you are interested check out my collection of poems in Cardboard Poetry. This story was inspired by a prompt on Tumblr from Yeah Write.

**********************

Baby girl,

I’m sorry about how long it has been since I’ve written to you. No, I have not forgotten you. No, I haven’t stopped loving you. I think about you every single day at every single moment but recently….oh baby, how can I write this down without feeling like I’m betraying you? This is going to be my last letter to you because as much as it comforts me to write these and store them away, it is not a way of letting go. The more I write to you, the more I am clinging to the past and I cannot have that if I want to move one. I’m sorry that the ink is running now, these tears won’t stop flowing; it hurts so much, even though you have never read my letters I still can’t help feeling like something is being ripped out from me. Whether it is my heart or my lungs, I cannot tell, all I know is that it’s painful and right now, it feels like I won’t ever recover from this but I know I have to.

 Your daddy has been a patient man; I wish you could have had the chance to meet him. He is a loyal and generous man who would have given you the world even if he had to risk his life for it. But, baby, this is taking a toll on him too and I cannot lose him as well. He is my only link to sanity and my entire world; you would have thought so too. He is a beautiful man.

Baby girl, ever since you went away, I have been aching inside and nothing has been able to take that away;  recently, I have realized that this is not only grief over the loss of you but over all the love that I had saved up, all of this, is banging against my rib cage to be let out. And honestly, darling I cannot go on loving the bibs and onesies I had bought for you. It would be disrespectful to inject your memories in to those because you are so much more than pieces of threads sewn together. You must know that, you were created out of the love between your father and I. You were once a dream, a name whispered at 2pm, you were our belief in angels, you were our little miracle. You were and are my first baby girl. Nothing can ever take that away. You were the evidence of unconditional and now…now, my love, you are the evidence of strength.

Oh, how I miss you, even though I had never known you. How I miss the way your father would press his ear against my belly to talk to you, and I hope that God had let you hear them. Your father loved reading you classic books and playing Jazz music, I know you liked them because I felt you kick. I'm sure you would have been a soccer player or maybe even a dancer, but whoever you would have grown up to be, I would have loved you. You would have been my little fairy and I would have protected you against everyone until you became a warrior yourself.

I am getting off track, dear. This letter was meant to be a goodbye but instead here I am crawling back in to memories of you, where everything felt safe. But I cannot do that anymore. Truth is you're gone. You are gone – how blunt and sharp those words are. You are gone and I am left with imaginations of what your skin might have felt like, I’m sure you would have had your father’s eyes and his smile.

 I have never seen him cry but the day the doctors told me we had lost you, he held me tightly as I sobbed and screamed about how cruel a prank it was to give you to us and then take you away without even giving us a chance to know you. I thought I was the only one grieving until I saw your father collapse on his knees and weep so hard that his entire back shook and heaved under the weight of the misery he had in him.

Anyway, you would have felt honored to have his smile, it’s the kind that feels so warm and makes you feel like you’re the only one in his eyes.

And as much I want to go on grieving, it is time for us to move on. This love I have saved up inside of me is needed elsewhere now. I’m sure you would have understood. Please, please, please, my love this is not betrayal.

You see, your going away has not only left a hole in me but in your father too, so we have been visiting a few orphanages recently. It is at one of these orphanages that we met a baby girl, only a few months old, and when I first met her I let myself imagine she was you. She was a little button – with her soft brown hair, red cheeks and tiny fists waving in the air as she cooed. For a moment, I believed she was calling out to me. And as soon as I saw her, I fell in love with her. She was so beautiful and I knew I would love her for the rest of my life.

Your father fell in love with her too, oh, the way he looked at her, oh baby, it reminded me of the way his eyes widened and his face set in to a boyish grin when he first saw your sonogram. And the heartbeat I had longed to hear for months, I found it in her tiny little chest. When I listened to it I sobbed so hard in your father’s arms because…because I don’t know. Maybe I was relieved, thinking, finally here is someone I can pour out all my love in to. Someone I can call my own, my daughter.

We decided to name her Ella, a simple and sweet name isn’t it, my love? And we are bringing her home this weekend.

So, this is my last letter to you, baby girl. This doesn’t mean that I do not love because I won’t ever stop loving you and I will never forget the little soul that gave me my first feeling of being a mother. I do not know why God took you away and I cannot live my life running around trying to find that answer. But for whatever reason it is, in the end, because of your passing, Ella and I have been brought together through our loss.

She is not you, even though sometimes I’d like to think so. But she cannot be you as it wouldn’t be fair to her either. But I will tell her of the beautiful angel that lived inside of me once, the angel who had listened to all my fears and worries of being a mother, the angel who kicked every time her daddy was near, the beautiful creature that nestled in my womb and was eventually stolen from me. I will tell her of how even after you went away you were my sanctuary during the hard months.

I’m sorry that I cannot write anymore but there will always be fresh flowers on your grave, my love. You will always be remembered and your name will no longer come out of my mouth as though I’m spitting thumbtacks. I promise you, Ella will not grow up knowing you as the anonymous big sister she lost but as the angel who will continuously watch over her.

Watch over my little girl for me, my love.

Love forever, Mom.

P.S. When it is finally my turn, do wait for me by the gates of heaven. I’m sure I’ll recognize you easily, because I know for certain that you have your father’s smile.