Dear Kenley

To my precious Little Ninja, 

Oh, how I miss you.  Today, I woke up crying.  When the first gray streaks of morning filtered into my bedroom and my eyes fluttered open, they were already full of tears.   My tears try to fill up the hole in my heart, but there is never enough.  Even though I cry rivers, the emptiness you left behind is too big.   Nothing will ever fill it.  

I can't believe you are gone.  I can't believe I had a beautiful, healthy baby one day, and then an empty body and heart the next.  Sometimes, I still expect to feel you move.  You had one mean left hook, you know.   Sometimes, I still expect to hear you cry from the next room.   Every once in a while, I think I might wake up from this world from which you are missing, and run to you in your crib, where you are smiling up at me.   I don't want this to be real, baby girl.  I don't want to be a mother without her child.  But I am.    You are not here, and I am left to carry on without you.  Some days, I am able to pull myself together.  Some days, I am able to take your memory and wrap it around me like a blanket, soft and warm and comforting.   I snuggle into you and my heart swells.   You'd be so proud of your mama on those days.  But, on other days, the blanket is full of holes and the world is so cold.  On those days, my darling daughter, nothing is enough to keep me warm, and my life without you is dark and broken.  I don't want you to see me like that.  On those days, Little Ninja, look away.  A mother should be strong for her child, and I am trying so hard.  So very hard all the time.  Please know that.

Today is Mother's Day, and it is already a hundred times harder that I feared it would be.  I am wracked with sobs as I write this to you.  I am so very sad you are not here with me  - that I don't get to hold you in my arms, or kiss your cheek, or inhale your sweet scent.  I am so very sad I never got to know your life outside of my belly and that I'll never get to watch you grow.  I loved you more than anything I could ever have imagined.  I loved you with a love so great and powerful that it holds me together and tears me apart at the same time.   I still love you.  I will always love you.  Until the last breath of air leaves my body, until my aching heart beats for the last time, until I grow cold and still with death, I will love you. 

I'm sorry you don't get to have the life we planned for you.   I'm sorry you'll never feel my arms around you.  I'm sorry your Daddy will never get to teach you about science and I'll never get to show you how to frost cupcakes.  I'm sorry I'll never know the color of your eyes, or what your favorite food is, or what games you like to play.  I'm sorry for so many, many things.   But, I am not sorry you existed.  Not for one second.  I am not sorry I carried you for 36 weeks just to end up brokenhearted.  Even though I lost you, I am not even a little bit sorry for the life you did have.  For a tiny sliver of my life, you were in it.  Your heart beat because mine did.  I would rather have had you and then lost you than never have had you at all.  For that, I will never be sorry.

You made me who I am.  Because of you, I am forever changed.   You made me a mother, Kenley Evelyn.  You transformed my ordinary heart into something more - something spectacular.   And even though right now, that heart is jagged and torn, it still beats with a rhythm just for you.  It always will.   One day, you will have little brothers or sisters, and they will help sew it back together, but you will always be inside it.  A nugget of light inside my patchwork heart.  Your light will shine through me wherever I go.  You will be the candle in my lantern, and I will use your flame to bring light to the darkness.  With one foot in front of the other, I walk through this life with your lantern in my hand and your father by my side.  You will always be a part of us.  No matter where we go, what we do, or who we meet, you will be there.


I love you now, always, and forever.

Love, 
Your Momma