Dearest little Zadie,

I wanted to write you a poem, but the words wouldn't form gently. I can only roughly, still raw, convey these thoughts.

You were born just ten days after my son, Asa. Your mama and I grew you and Asa in our wombs side by side. I cannot begin to know your mama and daddy's pain, but your death punched me in the gut: I had imagined you and Asa growing up together; I felt horribly guilty that he continued, inexplicably, to breathe and breathe and breathe, whereas you--for reasons we will never know--simply stopped. It may not make sense, but I could barely stand to look at Asa for a whole week after you died, I suppose because of the knowledge your mama would not be able to look at you again, ever. I went through the motions of taking care of him, but it took me a long time to take joy in him like before.

I only met you twice in person--only held you one time--but I loved you as much as I could love any child not my own. I wish I could have held and snuggled and loved on you more. When you left us, I kept seeing an image of you being ripped out of your mama's arms. It brings tears to my eyes every time that image reappears in my mind's eye, and there are still moments now, a year later, that the weight and sadness and the missing you hits me once again in an avalanche of aching sobbing.

If I feel like this, how do your mama and daddy feel? I'm sure it is beyond anything I could understand.

I have learned through this how strong your parents are. How much faith they have, and how much love they have for each other. So many parents grow apart in the wake of tragedies such as this, but as far as I can tell yours have grown closer together. They have not blamed each other or grown short-tempered. Of course they have struggled through their grief, but you need not ever feel, little Zadie, that you have done anything besides knit them together. And through the grieving process you have profoundly knit me to them and other friends to them, too.

And you have convicted me, little one. I don't profess to have improved spiritually; only God can judge that. But you remind me to be patient. You remind me to be grateful. You remind me to stop and appreciate the moments even as they inexorably slip through my fingers. Asa is a terrible sleeper, and when he wakes up for the third or fourth time in the night--when I am frustrated and tired--I think of you, sweet girl. I think of how much your mama and daddy would love for you to be there, waking them up three or four or five times a night. When Asa is careening through the house on a mission to destroy it, I think of how your parents would love so very much for you to be getting into the pots and pans. When I am overwhelmed with all the therapy appointments I have to take Asa to, I think of how much your mama and daddy would be delighted to take you to therapist after therapist, if only you were here for them to take. You remind me every day how precious and fleeting life can be.

At each of Asa's milestones, you are there in my heart, Zadie. I so wish we could have seen you sit and crawl, stand and walk, babble and play. I can't see Asa do all these things without imagining you doing them by his side. I wish more than anything that your first birthday had been a celebration rather than a bittersweet memorial.

Your short life has driven home to me how common to humanity is love and grief, life and death; how insignificant so many earthly squabbles seem in the starkness of an untimely and inexplicable tragedy; how powerless I am to give words to the profundity of this entire experience.

I will never forget you. You are made in God's image. You are important. Your life has been a blessing, and your memory is a blessing, too.

Your mama and daddy's friend,

Talya