Your Precious Life
So Perfect, So Sweet
February 5, 2022
July 27, 2023
Amirah Rayne
Miss Amirah, today would be your first birthday, and yet today feels like a marker that glares in the face of my denial.
From the time that I knew you were growing snugly in your mama’s belly, I was so excited to love you and be the best auntie I could be to you. I dreamed of all the stages of your precious life and how you and your cousins were going to be so lucky to have each other to grow up with.
I could see the way your mom and dad both glowed just knowing they did it. They took that scary leap of deciding to be your parents. You could see the joy and content just seeping from them. I loved it. I loved the big, big love you shared with them and showed them. You had SO many people eagerly waiting for your arrival. A whole community, who by the way is still very much here and loving you.
The week before your arrival, we could all feel you getting ready. All of us just waiting for the ‘signs’. Now, looking back, all the signs that you gave seem so obvious.
So obvious that it makes me sick to my stomach.
How could your signs have been missed!?
Why weren’t you rushed away into a place where emergency signs were heard loud and clear and you could have been safely set into the arms of your mommy and daddy?!?
The day your mom and dad called and said, “She didn’t make it”, will never escape me. My heart sunk. Everything paused, and the air got thick. All I knew was that now I needed to be present and strong for your mom and dad. No parent should have to endure this living hell.
Thoughts shot around my head. Endless whats, ifs and whys. But none of them bring you back.
I remember for days sobbing, begging and trying to bargain with god. Please, please, please!!! What do I need to do to reverse time. This isn’t and can’t be real. Show me what I do and I will, I promise! Let her be here please!!!
In my sorrow, I always felt you. I dreamed of you. I deeply, deeply loved you (I still do). In all my imagining of my kids and my life with you, I never dreamed it’d be with you as an angel.
It’s something I’ll always ache for, to be your auntie, in the physical.
The day I went to visit your body in the morgue is something I’ll always cherish and another thing I wish just wasn’t real.
I remember being so nervous to see you. How could only your body do you justice when your soul and beating heart is what shined so gosh damn bright?
I remember bursting into tears as soon as I held you. You’re perfect! So perfect and sweet. I kept waiting for you to open your eyes. You’re just sleeping, you’ve got to be just sleeping…. Please just be sleeping. I really wished someone would just warm you up. Maybe that would wake you up. Giving you your first and last kiss goodbye will forever mark my heart with your precious essence. I wished I could just bring you home with me and I could keep you safe.
As the days go on, all I can do is just be a witness to your ripple and all the love that is searching for a place to go. The waves of sadness, grief, shock, rage, confusion and anxiety that move through us — all who are touched by you.
I wished so badly that I could take it all away. I wished I could give your mom and dad a hug and somehow all their wounds would heal. But at the same time, how could we take away the ache of missing you? That’s all we had. If we can’t reverse the time and bring you here. I will absolutely accept the ache of missing you. All of our love searching for a way to honor you, to feel you.
Miss Amirah, your auntie loves you so much!
Your cousins miss you and try so hard to understand the incomprehensible. The first time your cousin Ru really cried, asking why she can’t see you, shattered me. It’s just not fair. She loves you.
The rock solid and yet weeping pain your uncle tries to hold together every time we get whims and signs of you, stings me — fully gut punches me. A human shouldn’t be hardened by a love they’re ready to give, shouldn’t be lost at how how to grapple with the death of a precious baby. It’s just not fair. He loves you.
Today, on your first birthday, we should be celebrating you. Loving you. Talking about all your growth and cute quirks. About how the times flies when we’re so in love with our babies.
Today we honor you, and talk about how time just simply doesn’t exist when you’re grieving a child.
It just simply isn’t fucking fair.
My prayer now is that your strong spirit helps, loves, protects and guides other families and babies. I pray that you help babies be seen and heard when they’re asking — screaming for a little extra support and a second look.
I pray that you have your energy in parts of our system that need more support for safety measures. I pray that you also get to be there to hug the babies that don’t get to make it and they join your allegiance of infant protectors with an energy so pure and light it’s unfathomable. I pray that the hearts of moms and dads are snuggled closely by all the little angels.
I pray that things don’t have to be this unfair.
I pray that when I get to see you again, you help me understand, and that we get to celebrate all the ways you’ve changed the world for the better.
Honoring and remembering you forever, Miss Amirah.
~ Aunt Faith, Uncle Chris, and Cousins Rutaceae & Atreyu