This Box of Love

This box contains moments in time. Moments that I re-live regularly. Perfectly packaged tokens of memories that are as vivid today as the day they happened.

A plaster cast of Ella's sweet hand. I remember my mom and sister gently holding Ella's lifeless body and making this in my kitchen while I sat at the dining room table on the phone with hospice or the funeral home, answering the hardest questions I've ever had to answer. I remember looking up and catching the intense gaze of my dad, who was watching his daughter in the first hour after her daughter's death, refusing to look away. Bearing witness to my pain. Loving fiercely.

So many tiny hats, crocheted by my mother. Beautiful colors lovingly looped together that would frame Ella's beautiful smiling face. Crocheted bonnets with chin ties that my mom made every night while we were in the hospital. Doing all she could. Loving fiercely.

Baby shower invitations reading "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" and so many cards for Ella with beautiful quotes and excerpts and words of comfort from family, friends, and strangers. Loving fiercely.

Blankets that cradled her, made by volunteers who dedicated their time and talent and hearts, knowing that for whomever received them, they would be a light in the darkest place. Loving fiercely.

A program from her service. One that was likely printed quickly as the funeral home filled with more and more people, as the walls were opened to create more space, as two days before Christmas, so many people gave us their time and their hearts, came to our side, and loved fiercely.

This box has held these things for five years. My family has grown and changed. Lennox and Iris have grown and done and learned so much. It's not fair. It will never be fair. Ella is both a part of - and missing from - every single moment of our lives. Five years has not made her loss any more bearable. Time does not heal all wounds. December is hard.

My daughter is dead and somehow I've lived. Somehow I've laughed. Somehow I've begun another December.

In the midst of all the pain and brokenness, there was so much love. In December most of all, I hold on tightly to the love.