Oct. 11, 2019 – Hi everyone! I know it has been awhile… we’re coming up on Liliana’s 2-1/2 year anniversary. So much has happened since the last time I wrote on my blog that I want to share some precious updates on how Liliana continues to penetrate our lives with her love in both expected and unexpected ways. There’s too much to put in one blog, so I’ll probably break it into two.
Let me go back a few months this summer…for Liliana’s second anniversary this year, we decided we wanted to help another pediatric hospice family. I called my dear social worker friend from the program and she told us about a family who recently had a little girl with Trisomy 18 a couple of months earlier. The family of seven (all girls!) had just moved to the U.S. and had very little in the way of furniture. We were able to provide furniture for their sweet baby girl for the nursery. They sent us pictures and it was such a beautiful way for us to honor Liliana through this little girl’s life. It brings us much joy to know that her family is able to enjoy her with these added comforts in her nursery.
The baby nursery is probably my favorite room in our house. I have such sweet memories of nursing my girls in the rocking chair and watching them sleep, play and grow. I made up many a tune in that room trying to get them to sleep. And then I used to love walking in to the room in the mornings when they would be standing with big smiles on their face waiting for me to snuggle them up. I still like to sit in the chair in that room and think of when they were young. And of course I think of Liliana being there too.
I’m not sure if I ever shared on here, but we left Liliana’s nursery untouched since she was born. Even though she never got to use it, I left the crib in there and all of her big sister’s infant clothes in the closet. It’s been on my to-do list for two years, but I’m not sure when I would’ve gotten to it had I not had some help.
Earlier this summer while I was cleaning one room, my girls decided to tackle one on their own – the nursery! I walked in and they had all of the baby clothes from the closet on the floor. I had a flood of emotions and was about to say something to them (not sure if it was going to be in anger or sadness or what), when my oldest daughter joyfully said “look mommy, we pulled out the clothes to give to other babies who don’t have any.”
Her words stopped me from getting angry, but they didn’t stop my tears from falling. So rather than saying anything, I just sat down on the floor with my girls and started helping them go through the baby clothes to donate. It was very emotional for me to look at all of the tiny outfits that were supposed to be worn one last time by Liliana. Even now as I sit here writing this, my eyes are flooded. It’s funny, as someone who has their eyes set on heaven, I have very little attachment to anything in this world. But, I am disproportionately attached to anything having to do with Liliana’s ‘stuff’ or what would’ve been her stuff. So, I didn’t donate everything. I kept some of the girls’ special outfits and baby blankets. It was very hard for me, but I’m glad my daughters decided to clean out the closet that day. I may never have gotten to it. Sometimes we all need a little help to move forward and this was definitely an area that I fell short.
My husband went through the same emotional sadness just a couple of months ago when we changed my daughter’s daybed. We decided to move it into the nursery as a spare bedroom for my niece or nephews when they sleep over. This meant the crib had to finally come down. He did it by himself and I know Liliana was next to him the whole time. Still, even with strong faith and certainty of where she is, he wasn’t immune to missing his baby girl and the sadness of the task at hand. Walking in the room staring at the empty space where the crib used to be was like a sad metaphor for the piece of our hearts that are missing.
Around this same time over the summer, my three year old said to me one day, “Mommy, Liliana’s going to love her big girl bed when she comes back.” I asked her what she meant and it was clear that she thought Liliana would come back to live with us from heaven. I told her that Liliana lived in heaven and she wouldn’t be coming back home, and with her saddest voice she said, “but I miss her and I want to see her face.” This broke my heart. My girls talk about Liliana all the time and they have said many things that have melted my heart. But this….. I had no words. All I could say was, me too baby, me too.
I wasn’t prepared for the slew of emotions that came with something as simple as taking down a nursery. But it was so much bigger than checking an item off my to-do list. It was letting go of precious memories of the past and dreams of the future. It was seeing the look on my daughter’s face when I told her that Liliana wouldn’t ever use her big girl bed or come home. It was closing a beautiful and tragic chapter in our lives that I was reluctant to let go of.
When we set out last spring to look for a donation on Liliana’s anniversary, we had no idea that it would end up being a nursery for another Trisomy little girl, nor did we know that this was the summer we would finally take down our nursery. That’s the funny thing about to-do lists, it may not be on our own timetable, but sometimes things come at the right time nonetheless.
My sweet girl may never have gotten to sleep in her crib or rock in her chair, but because of her, another baby girl can. And I’d like to believe that her mom sits in the nursery and rocks with her and tells her about a baby girl named Liliana who brought so much love into this world that it had to be shared with others.
For she herself is love… and time and time again, she has shown us that her love will endure forever!
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.1 Corinthians 13:13