Ten years. (from Dad)

[A guest post written by D.]

To my daughter, Mila….

Today would have been your 10th birthday. 

I used to think about what you’d be like at 5. Or 10. Or 18. But with the passage of time, I no longer think about who you would have been. I think about who you were and what you mean to me today and forever.

You are our first child. As much as your sister likes to argue the merits of her being the “oldest”, you were our first. When Mama was pregnant with you, we were so excited. We waited for you for 9 whole months, building to a crescendo of new-parent anticipation, love, and yes, preparation. And then, in an instant, we lost you. 

And even though we held you for only a few hours before we had to say goodbye, you will forever be our first child. We love you always.

You are the foundation on which our family is built. Your death was like an earthquake. It was so disorienting. The life path we were on wasn’t altered…it didn’t come to an abrupt dead end…  It completely disappeared. 

Suddenly we were in the middle of a dense jungle with no path or purpose in sight. We had no choice but to start over and carve our way out. But which direction should we go? Any direction we could pick was as good (or as bad) as the next. What more did we have to lose?

So we took some risks. We moved abroad. The entire trajectory of our family was changed by you.

And even more importantly, you changed who we are as parents. How I am as a dad. How Mama is as a mom. When I see your brother and sister and how close they are, I’d like to think you had something to do with that too. Who would they be without you? Would they even be?

You are not just part of our family; we grew out of you.

You changed me fundamentally for the better. For me, there is a before you and an after you. You were born lifeless, but the ways you have affected my life are profound and permanent. My whole world changed on December 23, 2013. Losing you stripped me emotionally to the bone. 

Before you, I spent way too much time in my own head regretting the past or worrying about the future. So much so that I missed out on years of living in the present. Unfortunately, nothing could have brought me more violently into the “now” than losing you.

So I have spent the better part of a decade “after you” trying to rebuild myself into a better person. That would not have happened if it weren’t for you. You forced a self-reckoning. 

There are so many ways that I can continue to grow personally, but today feels like a good day to acknowledge how far I’ve come. I hate that losing you had to be the reason for who I’ve become, but I am so grateful for it.

To Mila’s mama….

You are the love of my life and the most amazing mother in the world. I’ll never forget how you were with Mila that day. In the deepest throes of emotional and physical agony a woman can endure, you were above all else, Mila’s mama. I don’t know how you did it. And 10 years later, I am still marveling at you. You are the strongest person I have ever met.

Losing Mila could have easily broken us in ways that were impossible to repair. Instead, it deepened our love for each other. For a while there, it was just the two of us, wandering in the world lost and alone. But we had each other. And somehow we managed to put one foot in front of the other until we found joy in life again. Now I wake up everyday knowing that no matter what life throws at us, we will persevere together.

I also want to thank you for this blog. You have left our family and the world such a beautiful tribute to Mila and a vivid testimony of grief, anger, fear, hope, and rebirth. It is truly a gift.

I feel so much warmth reading your posts now–even through the sadness. My favorites: Mila’s Life, Mila’s Birth Story, your travelogs of our escaping the world in Japan, finding hope and happiness again at the end of the world in Chile and Argentina (and parts 2, 3, 4), physically and emotionally moving on from the west coast; and more recently, your eulogy for my Dad. 

I hope that one day when they are older, our children will read this blog and learn from it.

To the World….

Having a stillborn baby is excruciatingly isolating. People don’t know what to say. Let’s face it, no one likes talking about dead babies. So they say nothing. Or they ignore you. Or even worse, they say something like “don’t worry, you’ll have another”.

Mila’s mom has documented that isolation in this blog. It’s a tough read. But as rare as it is to hear a mother talk so honestly about having a stillborn child, it’s even rarer to hear a father do the same. Maybe one day I’ll work up the courage to talk about what that’s like in more detail.

Every 16 seconds, a baby is stillborn. Today I think about the many parents around the world who will have to endure that isolation with little or no support network. Or even worse, be actively stigmatized by their community.

Which is why I am so grateful for our family and friends and the doctors, nurses, and support groups who helped us through those early years. Many friends were there for us 10 years ago and continue to be by our side today. Some of you didn’t know us then but have become the closest of friends. 

Two of the first people to rush to our side in San Francisco after we lost Mila are gone now too.

I miss them.

And so life goes on.

On Mila's 10th birthday.

Although I haven't written here regularly for a long time, this blog will always be special to me.

Today I don't find myself compelled to say much and that is because, for me, this blog serves its purpose. I have said what I had to say. I wrote this as a record of Mila's brief but beautiful life; and of all the experiences in the wake of her stillbirth that I couldn't allow to be forgotten, but that I also could not bear to carry myself. This was a place to set those things down for safekeeping. That brings me a lot of peace.

When I started this blog, I called it "After Mila" with the blind hope that someday, I would get to a place in my life that truly would feel like an "after." And I have. I'm here. I made it.

So today, all there is for me to say is:

Happy 10th birthday, my girl. Thank you for everything you have given me. I love you, endlessly. xo Mama

This body is not me; I am not caught in this body,

I am life without boundaries,
I have never been born and I have never died.
Over there the wide ocean and the sky with many galaxies
All manifests from the basis of consciousness.
Since beginningless time I have always been free.
Birth and death are only a door through which we go in and out.
Birth and death are only a game of hide-and-seek.
So smile to me and take my hand and wave good-bye.
Tomorrow we shall meet again or even before.
We shall always be meeting again at the true source,

Always meeting again on the myriad paths of life.

-- Thích Nhất Hạnh

A letter to you on your 7th birthday.

Mila Nalin. Today you would have turned 7 years old.

Every day you remind me of what matters. You remind me to appreciate this moment, because the next is not promised; and so you remind me, don’t wait. You teach me empathy and you teach me strength. You show me what I am capable of, and also what I cannot control. You have always been and continue to be a blessing.

xo
Mama

Re: the photos. I don’t have any proper pictures of you. So these are some of the places where I have found you.

Second birthday.

Happy birthday, my little Mila love.

Two years out from her death and birth, I'd like to say something beautiful, but real life is not a novel so not everything can be profound. The first year after her stillbirth took shape in a poetic way, beginning in an abyss of grief and ending with our Patagonian backpacking trip to commemorate Mila's first birthday, where Isla's little light first sparked. But life keeps on going. There is a second anniversary, and a third, and a fourth, on and on and on, and not every one can be a grand capstone. So I find myself wondering how to grieve her, celebrate her, and remember her on all the anniversaries to come, as December 23rd becomes (and how is this even possible?) gradually more mundane.

Although the place where I was two years ago is harder to access now, I still remember. That little empty place in my heart is still there, covered over with layers of scar tissue, the original edges of the wound obscured. I remember how big that emptiness once yawned, how loud the silence was, how blindingly bright the world and how jagged and unbearable its edges. What it was like to look at the motionless ultrasound image. What the ceiling looked like as I lay on the table, feeling dead myself. What it was like to watch Mila emerge without a sound. What she smelled like, and what it was like to kiss her little face as it grew cold. What it was like to see D cry, which I had not seen before and have not seen since. What it was like to visit the funeral home the day after Christmas, three days postpartum, and sit in that echoless room discussing urns while my milk came in with no one to drink it. Horror. The darkest horror I'd never imagined. I can't believe I survived it.

So I am grateful for the mundanity. It means we've come to some kind of peace. I know the pain and anger will never be gone, but it's become easier to bear. I live in a world now where on the same day that I buy Mila's yahrzeit candle, I can continue on to browse the bookshop; enjoy my lunch; play with the dog; and celebrate, with real happiness, Isla's gorgeous, miraculous first laugh.

Recently Isla and I went on a playdate with what D likes to call the Increasingly Less Sad Moms Club (formerly just the straight-up Sad Moms Club). We are four moms who all lost our first children within three months of each other, either in utero at term or shortly after birth; and who all had healthy second babies this year. M observed that we must look like a normal playgroup from the outside; who would suspect the dark place we all share? But in a sense, we are a normal playgroup too. In addition to sharing the experience of losing a child, we are also now all moms who have made it through the subsequent pregnancy and are learning the ropes for the first time, enjoying the first milestones, struggling with the challenges that most first-time moms have. We have both of those experiences now. I'll never be the same person that I was before, but that's okay. Children are supposed to change you, and both Mila and Isla continue to make their marks indelibly on me (and not just figuratively). For that I am grateful.

So how to remember Mila on her second birthday? Well, D and I lit her candle, and we will have some family time with Isla and Schmorgy. And I would like to repost the story of Mila's Life, to celebrate the short time that she was with us. And, there's no getting around it, we will miss her so, so much, and wonder what she would have been like, and wish we could have both our girls with us. And tomorrow morning when we get up and the candle has burned out, we will look at it and feel sad and still a little empty. And then we'll continue on with our day, because both Isla and Schmorgy will demand breakfast and play. And I guess it's fine that not every one of Mila's birthdays will have some kind of grand poetry, because in the course of writing this blog post, I've realized I remember her every day, just by being alive.

Anyway. Since I don't have something profound to say today, I'd like to borrow some thoughts from Aaron Freeman, which are very much in line with how I have come to think about Mila and the way in which she is now a part of the everything that there is. Here they are, emphasis mine.

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got. 

And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever. 

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives. 

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen.

Photobomb!

Photobomb!

If Mila had lived, I don't think either of these two would be a part of our family right now. Something terrible happened and our family is now somehow simultaneously lesser and fuller than it might otherwise have been. The thought makes me sad, confused, scared, and grateful all at once.

Their roads diverged.

It's a strange new world; the lights are bright and, like Isla, I'm still adjusting my eyes.

It was so surreal to leave the hospital in the opposite direction, outgoing, with the Nut in my arms. I'd gotten so accustomed to being incoming, arriving at triage full of fear, the hospital a place of anxiety, mystery, and ultimately reassurance, but never of joy. A nurse wheeled me out, retracing the same path we had taken in three days earlier, but everything looked different and unrecognizable to me. We emerged into the bright sunlight and drove home through SF streets that looked distantly familiar. I felt like I had been gone on a long, long trip.

I marvel at Isla's perfect face and find it unbelievable that something so sweet was inside me just days ago. I think of my pregnancy with her, until now the only part of motherhood that I knew, and it now feels unreal. The daily walks with Schmorgy to the park, the countless doctor's appointments, the weekly and then daily antenatal testing, the panicked trips to triage, the twice-daily kick counts, the big belly that I protected but was too afraid to think much about even as it grew and grew and became a casual topic of conversation for the outside world. That whole time, I was walking around with this little girl growing inside me. Now she is out and shared with the rest of the world, no longer just mine. I felt her hiccup on the inside, and now all can see her hiccup on the outside. People buy her soothing baby toys that play simulated heartbeat sounds and I think, that's my heartbeat they're trying to replicate for her. The practice breaths I watched her draw via ultrasound on the inside, her diaphragm moving up and down, I now hear as sweet, tiny heaves as she lies on my chest. The regular, liquidy thuds of her heartbeat that I listened to on countless fetal monitors now happen outside of my body, beyond my hearing.

I wish I could have enjoyed that time more, the time when she belonged wholly to me.

The first night in the hospital after she was born, I held her to my chest as she slept, her head nestled just under the right side of my chin. The room was dark and quiet, and D was asleep on the couch. I realized I was holding Isla much the same way I'd held Mila on her first and only night, and I cried.

Mila and Isla don't look entirely alike, but they share many features. Their hair, eyelashes, and little lips. Even their birth weights were the same. For the first couple of days, Isla's every gesture and grimace reminded me anew and in vivid detail what was lost for Mila. I'm so happy for what we have, but it still hurts to think of what my first sweet girl was denied. It's not fair.

On my left forearm there is a scab from my IV from Isla's delivery and, just inches from that, a faint white dot, the scar from my IV from Mila's.

In our living room, the remainder of Mila's one-year yahrzeit candle sits on the same shelf as a photo of Isla at one day old. They're both flanked by plush llamas from our Chile/Argentina trip for Mila's first birthday, during which Isla was most likely conceived.

It's still confusing to me, how things were so much alike and yet so different. Their roads diverged.

Little sister.

It's a little sister for Mila and Schmorgy. She's got all her bits, so far as can be determined via ultrasound at this point, and a normal cord insertion. D and I are happy and cautiously relieved. I'll let Schmorgy be the one to be unreservedly, no-holds-barred excited and optimistic. :)

Somebody asked me how it felt to have the anatomy scan done for the Nut (as we're calling her until she has a proper name). It was confusing -- scary and happy and sad all at once.

Scary because every pregnancy ultrasound I'll have for the rest of my life will be terrifying in the moments while the tech applies the gel and moves the wand, before the picture comes into focus and I can see movement and a heartbeat.

Happy because she proved to be alive and well -- unmistakably human with developed little hands, big feet like Mila's and D's, four pumping chambers in her heart, a spine with every vertebra clear on the screen, shapely quads and hamstrings wrapped around two strong femur bones, an umbilical cord and placenta that are wonderfully unremarkable. Because she moved vigorously, kicking and squirming and doing flips like her big sister did. And because she is a she, who will give me another shot at doing all the sweet little girl things that I didn't get to do with Mila.

Sad because still, still, Mila doesn't ever get to do those sweet little girl things, or play with the toys we bought her, or sleep in the crib that D put together for her. It feels like she was shortchanged. Some cell on some random, careless whim divided or implanted in some funky way that led some other cells down some narrow path, further and further, until they all turned into a velamentous cord insertion. Which everybody said would work out fine, until it didn't. And just as randomly, just as obliviously, the Nut's earliest cells went down some other path and gave her a normal one. The membrane separating the two paths feels so thin. Why, why, why? There is no reason why. Sometimes the universe is random. Atoms and molecules and cells move about in the dark.

Here is my strongest, dearest, sincerest wish that they all come together in just the right way for the Nut.

The secret to happiness.

We have started walking into uncharted territory.  The days keep going by and now, many of the first big milestones that I had imagined having with Mila have passed.  It feels like we're only now getting into the real After.

I don't know how this part goes.

D says things have gone back to "normal", and so what?  And now what?  We're past the delirious first phase of grief, the awkward encounters with people who don't know have dwindled, the conversations have turned to other things, we're frankly pretty functional again... but HEY IT STILL FEELS SHITTY WTF IS IT JUST LIKE THIS FOREVER AND EVER??  I think the short answer, the answer that we just kind of have to live with now, is YES.  As good as everything else in our lives gets, the fact that Mila didn't make it will always be a horrible, unfair, tragic, shitty, and permanent thing and there's just no rationalizing or getting around that.

On the flight back from Hawaii a couple weekends ago, I listened to a few TED talks about happiness by psychologists, researchers, even a Benedictine monk.  Some of the (paraphrased) insights that stuck with me:

• Sorry, there is no secret to happiness.  Invest more time in your social relationships.  Worry less about accumulating things and more about accumulating experiences.  It's like asking for the secret to dieting - there isn't one.
• Less stuff leads to more time leads to more happiness.
• People are universally happier when they are fully engaged - in the present moment, not mind-wandering - with whatever they're doing, even if that task is not particularly pleasant (e.g., commuting).
• Individual life events, whether good (new job, new house, winning the lottery, getting married) or bad (getting fired, getting divorced, getting injured), do not have nearly as large an impact in terms of duration and intensity on long-term happiness as people expect them to have.  Research shows most life traumas, with a few exceptions, have zero impact on people's baseline happiness after three months.  (Blogger's note: I think I can authoritatively say that having a stillborn baby is one of the exceptions.  But point noted, TED talk.)  Humans are resilient.
• It is not happiness that makes us grateful; it's gratefulness that makes us happy.  To be happy, we must become aware that every moment is a given moment, not one that we have earned or bought or was assured to us; and therefore it is a gift.

Luckily, I think my brain chemistry naturally skews happy.  When bad thoughts start to visit on me, that's probably one of the biggest things that keeps me from sliding (or deliberately throwing myself) into a black hole of despair, and I find myself doing some of these things out of instinct.  Not always right away, but eventually I get there.

Here are some things I do or have done to make myself happier (no particular order).

1. Remind myself that I am alive!  And healthy.  And so is D.  And so are many people who are important to us.
2. Observe the sunshine.
3. Quit a job that had become unhealthy for me.
4. Ogle D.
5. Made new friends, and kept some old ones.
6. Ignored other people's problems that I can't fix.
7. Gossiped about other people's problems that I can't fix.
8. Crafted.
9. Gave people presents for no reason.
10. Bought a slow cooker and made chicken soup.
11. Marvel at the landscape around SF.
12. Cooked for D when he was sick.
13. Hiked Mount Tam with L.
14. Stayed up late to watch the Game of Thrones finale.
15. Watch standup comedy, Colbert, or John Oliver.
16. Shop for clothes and books.
17. Threw out a lot of old papers and filed/organized the rest.
18. Wrote down and put away toxic thoughts, rather than carry them in my head.
19. Unfollowed or unfriended people on Facebook if their posts bothered me or I couldn't remember who they were.
20. Ordered a drink that came in a coconut.
21. Listened to music I liked in high school/college.
22. Felt happy for other people.

Re: #21, sometimes the music is hard because even songs I've been listening to for years can suddenly sound like they mean something different now.

A long December and there's reason to believe 
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leaving
Now the days go by so fast. 

And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass.

Or, even more to the point,

So can you understand
Why I want a daughter while I'm still young?
I wanna hold her hand
And show her some beauty
Before this damage is done

But if it's too much to ask, if it's too much to ask
Then send me a son.

When that happens, all I can do is skip to the next track or do something else on the list.  Shit goes on, I guess.  We've evolved to get back to the baseline.

Keep running.

I'm having a bad day, guys.

A year ago this April my hometown of Boston was attacked.  D and I had been living in SF for eight months and I was sad to be missing the marathon for the first time in a long time.  We used to live on the course at mile 23, and hosted a viewing party every year.  I was at work when I got a text from my sister.  Miss your marathon parties. :(  I texted back, Me too :(

Almost an hour later, she texted again.  Explosions at the finish line.  Is everyone you know who ran it ok??

I spent the rest of the day Googling and following the news.  The confusion quickly gave way to horror.  We waited anxiously to hear from D’s brother and our friends who were there.  At home, I switched on the TV and familiar places lit up the screen.  I watched that downtown stretch of Boylston Street, a scene of celebration and personal victory, a scene I knew so well, explode into chaos.  People screaming.  Blood all over the sidewalk.  Body parts littering the street.  I watched it over and over and over.  I could not stop crying.

Three nights later, news of a shooting at MIT flickered across the screen.  Then a carjacking in Allston.  A car chase into the suburbs.  The MIT police officer pronounced dead.  A firefight in the middle of Watertown.  The entire city of Boston and surrounding towns going into lockdown.  I remember wondering if the world were about to end.  Somewhere in all this, it became clear that these were the activities of the marathon bombers.  We spent hours glued to the TV and the internet, getting annoyed as CNN mispronounced the names of familiar towns and streets.  The lockdown stretched into the next day, a Friday.  I spent the workday following the events, unable to think of anything else.  Shortly after 5:30PM Pacific time, the suspect was apprehended and taken into custody.

After four harrowing days, I exhaled.  The city of Boston exhaled.  And then there was celebration.  Crowds came pouring out of their homes in the middle of the night and gathered at the finish line and in Boston Common to pay tribute to the people who had been injured and killed, the heroes who came to their aid, the medical professionals who cared for them, and the police who captured the bombers.  D and I and some friends visiting from Boston had a big drink and celebrated along with them from SF.

That was the weekend Mila was conceived.  A week later, I went home and visited the finish line myself, as her cells divided secretly inside me.  I chose to think of her conception as a sign of hope.  A light in the darkness.  Good triumphing over evil.

Now it's a year later, an April later.  Boston is gearing up for the marathon again.  Mila should be 3 months old.  But Mila is gone, and it is so, so dark.

This morning I made the mistake of looking through old pictures on my phone.  I saw months and months of belly pictures scroll by, and I actually smiled.  After the very last belly picture, which showed me standing in our kitchen and smiling on December 22nd, the belly pictures suddenly gave way to a screenshot of a list of funeral homes.  I’d forgotten that was there.

I wanted to throw my phone across the room.  These last few weeks, I thought I was doing okay.  I’ve been downright cheerful.  But watching her life end like that on the tiny screen of my phone made me realize I still, still cannot believe she is dead.  She is supposed to be here.  This wasn't supposed to happen.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about what I want our lives to look like in a year, and have been thinking about ways to make my work schedule more accommodating of a family in the near future.  It’s scary, thinking about making choices that are not career-maximizing.  I’ve never made those choices before.  Today that started to get to me.  What am I doing, looking for working mom hours, when I don’t even have a baby to look after?  It’s hard not to feel very, very bad about myself.  Lame.  Unambitious.  Stupid.  Can't hack it, can’t do anything right.

This afternoon I was sitting in my parked car and came across this photography/film project to honor the one-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15.  The photographer, Robert Fogarty, photographed and filmed the survivors coming back to the finish line.  I read some of the interview quotes; they were beautiful.

My message is “Still Standing.” I wrote still standing because the bombers hurt me—they took my legs—but I can still stand on them. 

I’m still standing. 

This is the first time that I was back at the finish line. I had never been back, and this was about reclaiming it. That finish line has been a negative space since the marathon. This was about reclaiming that space in a positive way. I chose to be there. I took back control. I chose to do this and the heck with everybody else.  Celeste Corcoran

*****

I think that the experience of losing my leg has made me become more compassionate, so I may have less of a leg now, but I think my heart is bigger because of it.  Heather Abbott

*****

We have deformities to our bodies, but I think it makes us stronger to be so open with it. I think it’s part of our therapy to get through what happened to us.  Roseann Sdoia

*****

I read a quote, and it said “Never be ashamed of a scar. That it only means you are stronger than what tried to hurt you.” And it really resonated with me. I am strong, and this is just a little token.  Lee Ann Yanni

*****

“Love this life” has been my motto since the bombing. I spent a lot of time prior to the bombing always seeking out the next thing in my career and putting the majority of my focus on finding the right career for myself and on school. I didn’t always take time to focus on those around me —my family and friends, the ones who I’d want to spend my last days with. Since the bombing, I’ve decided to spend each day as if it were my last. This to me means focusing on and acting more graciously to all of those around me. It also means spending as much time with friends and family as possible and viewing those I love as the center of my universe.  Brittany Loring

I started the video, and as I watched it, I sat in the car and cried.

Keep running.  Boston Strong.

Dear World, a love letter from Boston marathon bombing survivors. from Dear World on Vimeo.

Perspective.

It is strange to think that, even in a world without Mila, there is something to be grateful for; but I am.  I am grateful that we were able to get pregnant quickly and naturally.  That she was with us long enough that we have some very happy memories and funny stories.  That she, the sweet baby that she is, gave me a fast and uncomplicated labor.  That she was otherwise beautiful, healthy, and normal.  That there was no agonizing anticipation of problems in the months before she was born, nor any drawn out aftermath in the NICU and hospice before we could start grieving.  That my physical recovery has been fast.  That I have D, who is full of love and fiercely protective of our family.  That we have our parents, our families, our friends, and our health.  I know enough now that I cannot take any of these things for granted, but right now, I have them.

Mila's life.

Two weeks after we lost Mila, after we had broken the terrible news to our extended families and most of our friends, we composed a mass email about her and hit send.

Her death leaves us with an awful sadness, and it’s not just one kind of sadness.  This is a sadness that has all kinds of terrible facets.  I turn it over in my mind, and I see that there are so many things to be sad about.  Of all of them, one of the worst ones for me is the knowledge that, for the rest of my life, whenever I talk about her, the most salient thing that people will know about her is that she is dead.  This bright, happy little baby, full of joy and life and potential, whom I felt I knew - all that, reduced to “Oh, she was your baby that died.”

The death of a baby is not like any other kind of death, where the person who died leaves behind many friends and relatives who knew him well, remember who he was, and have happy memories they can treasure and smile over.  The death of a baby leaves behind nothing.

I felt I had to do something to fight that darkness.  Her death will always be a tragedy, but her life was light; and I can only ever feel gratitude that she lived.  So we wrote that email, and so I reproduce it here - not about the manner of her death, but about her life.  So that someone could know her, other than just me and D.  So that we could tell all the funny pregnancy stories about her that, otherwise, no one will ask to hear.

Here it is.

Since she didn't get a chance to meet the other important people in our lives, we'd like to tell you a little bit about her and how we hope she will be remembered. Over the 37 weeks that we carried her, she developed a distinctive personality that we came to know and love very much.

Her nickname is Nuggs, short for Nugget (or Nuggette, when we found out in late August that she was a girl). She got her nickname when she was about the size of a chicken mcnugget, and it stuck. 

Like everyone in her family, she liked to eat. In her parents' long running debate on the deliciousness of mint chocolate chip ice cream, she sided with her dad and made her preferences known by turning her mom into a mint chocolate chip ice cream lover. She also helped her mom judge the first annual family Thanksgiving/Hanukkah bacon-off - and naturally, she thought her dad's entry was best in class. 

She was happy and liked fun, and had a naughty sense of humor. She always kicked up a storm when watching her favorite HBO comedy, Ja'mie Private School Girl. To our mild concern, her favorite scene seemed to be the one in episode three where Ja'mie hosts a giant house party. She bounced around a lot and liked to show off her moves at the doctor's office and during her mom's important work meetings. The sounds she knew best besides her parents' voices were Pitch Perfect, the Homeland theme song, and Howard Stern. She was never shy about showing off her ladybits during ultrasounds. We think this had something to do with her Vegas beginnings. (More on that below.) 

She was a very sweet baby and gave her mom an easy pregnancy. But she also stood up for herself - she did not like the fake baby from parenting class, and made it known by trying to push it off of her mom's lap. She knew that thing was a fake.  

She was well traveled. One of her very first trips was to Vegas - in fact, her parents found out they were pregnant the day after returning from that trip. She was a San Francisco native, but she has also visited her grandparents in Boston and Fort Lauderdale, and her cousins in Phoenix. She paid her respects at the Boston Marathon bombing site two weeks after the attack. She kayaked off of Malibu and in Kealakekua Bay, where she encountered wild bottlenose dolphins. She camped and road tripped down to LA, and went sea otter- and elephant seal-spotting along the way. Most recently, she cheered her dad on to a Boston qualifying time at the California International Marathon in Sacramento. 

She was born on December 23, 2013 at 10:13 PM at UCSF, weighing 6 pounds and 14 ounces, and measuring 19 inches long. She had her mom's dark hair, long fingers, and eyes. She had her dad's ears, long eyelashes, and long skinny feet. She had a button nose, red little lips, and soft cheeks. She was the prettiest baby girl we have ever seen. 

Her first name, Mila, is a Russian name meaning love and grace. Her middle name, Nalin, is a Thai name meaning lotus flower, a Buddhist symbol for purity of spirit. 

We will always love and remember her for these things.

Promises.

We wrote our vows kind of at the last minute, sitting at opposite ends of our hotel room at 11PM the night before our wedding, each quietly tapping at our laptops, while our friends were out getting smashed on piña coladas at Bahia Cabana across the street.

When I wrote my vows that night, I of course meant them deeply; but I did not expect that we would be faced with so much sadness so soon, less than two years after getting married.  It is such an unnatural tragedy, too - the death of a child, our first child.  It is deep and lasting.  It goes against the natural order of things.  It is so wrong.  I didn’t ever even consider that it might happen to us.

But here we are, and we are laughing and smiling and crying and feeling a little bit broken and loving each other through what I think is one of the hardest things that a couple can weather, together.  I am so lucky.

I, P, take you, D, to be my husband.
I promise that I will stand by you, care for you, and defend you.
I will be your rock and your friend.
I will travel with you and discover with you,
laugh with you and cry with you,
hold my heart open to you and love you,
through whatever joy and whatever sadness may come,
today and for all days. 

I, D, take you, P, as my wife.
I promise to be your biggest fan and your toughest critic.
Your strongest ally and your best friend.
I promise to make sure we laugh and smile together every day, even in the hardest of times.
To never let the little things distract us from what's important.
I will always share with you, love you, and take care of you now until the day I die.