Remembering Molly (2 years) ~ Happy Birthday Baby Girl!

Happy Birthday Molly Marie!

We love you and miss you so much!

Once again I find myself wondering who you would be today? I watch your cousins and friends, whom you would have been close in age to, grow and develop and often think about you and imagine you playing with them. I see the latest milestones they have reached, walking, talking, interacting with Sean and Abby and I picture you doing the same.

Our life has been so busy over the past year! Daddy really has his hands full at work. Sean has flourished and learned so much in Kindergarten. Abby is such an amazing addition to our family and she has also turned our lives upside down! In many ways the time we had to celebrate your life and grieve your death before Abby was conceived and until she was born, was a needed time of peacefulness and preparation for what was to come.

Though I wouldn’t trade anything about our life right now, except having you here with us, there never seems to be enough hours in the day. I am trying these days to live my life more mindfully. Your life and death is a constant reminder to me about how our situations can change in an instant and that we never know what day, hour or minute could be our last. When I find myself wishing that Sean and Abby would grow up faster, so we could “just get through” a certain stage that they or we are struggling with (be it nursing around the clock, struggling with sleep, listening/discipline issues, etc.), I try to remind myself that we can never get this time back. I feel so very blessed and lucky to have two healthy living children. I am doing my best to embrace as many moments as I can with Sean and Abby at the wonderful ages they are at. I understand more than ever now that the future will be here soon enough.

I know that I don’t visit your grave as often as I did right after your birth and death. However, I try to get there when I can and I believe that you do know that you are always on my mind and in my heart. Thank you for anything and everything you may have been able to do for your Daddy, your big brother, your little sister, our extended family, our friends and me over the past year watching over us from Heaven. I continue to find such peace and comfort in the idea that you are still so closely connected to us in that way.

As more of our older friends and family members join you in Heaven, I imagine you being a part of the welcoming committee and giving them the opportunity to do all the things with you there that we aren’t able to here on earth, such as playing with you and giving you lots of hugs and kisses. If you haven’t already met, please look out for our dear family member Dave, your maternal grandmother’s cousin’s husband (who was like an uncle to me), who died after a long and difficult battle with cancer on Sunday (April 11).

Please also hold your paternal grandmother’s mother (your great grandmother, a.k.a. “GG“) close to your soul, as she fell and broke her hip and had surgery this week. GG is struggling with her body and her spirit. All of us that love and care about GG so much want her to be healed and at peace.

I also like to think of you as a very special young soul who can help to connect other young souls with our friends and family members here on Earth who want so much to have a child(ren) join their families. I really do believe that you had a hand in bringing your sister Abby here, healthy and safely, to us. Along those lines, if you are able to intercede in any way, I ask you to please do what you can to help bring a child into your Godparents’ lives. Your Aunt Meg and Uncle Bill want so much to build their family through adoption. I hope and pray that it won’t be long before they are matched with a son or daughter that will bring as much joy and love to them as Sean, Abby and you have brought into your Daddy and my life together.

Thank you for everything you continue to teach us through your life and death. I am still amazed at how many other lives your short, but very special, life has impacted. In November some friends of ours had a baby boy that was born still. Their son had been diagnosed a few months earlier with Trisomy 18. Because of our journey with you, we were better able to support our friends during their pregnancy and since the death of their baby boy. No one should ever have to live through the death of their child(ren), however if and when it happens we are grateful to be able to help others “walk the mile and bear the load” as one of my favorite church hymns, called “The Servant Song,” says we can do. We hope that you and our friends’ son Ben are happy playing together in Heaven!

My sweet Molly-girl, is it really possible that it has been two years since I carried you, since your Daddy held you in his arms as you breathed your last breath, so soon after you took your first one? As I remember thinking around this time last year, the time that has passed since your birth and death often seems like so long ago and other times it seems like it was just yesterday.

Please continue to watch over our family and our friends. We believe that we will be with you together again someday in Heaven. We will never forget you, Molly Marie, our first daughter, our second child and forever our baby girl.

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Molly, happy birthday to you!

Love always,
Mommy