49 Minutes.....

Her name is Charlotte Grace.

Have you seen her Thomas?

An impatient little girl she is, always running, running, chasing rainbows, catching them! A clever girl, a mischievous girl, pirouetting through the refracted crystals, swooping and diving among the colours, singing, giggling, chattering.

A noisebox, just like you!
Can you hear her?

Sometimes you can catch a flash of her, the essence of her, in the rainbow's sweeping arch across the skies, in the sparkling dew of a summer morning, in the twinkle of the brightest stars.
But only if you pretend you're not looking.

You can hear her tinkling voice (such a chatterbox!) in the birds' evening chorus, in the babble of a sunlit brook, in the frittering of leaves on a silver birch...
But only if you pretend you're not listening.

She's a flighty one, she is! Swift of foot and as cheeky as a sprite, you'll never, ever, pin her down, never quite catch her - this busy, busy girl with moonbeams at her heels.

Little Charlotte, who wouldn't wait, who couldn't wait....

Forty nine minutes she stayed. No time at all - yet time enough for a girl to make her mark, to change everything.

A tiny child, of hope, of dreams, of love. A masterpiece. Perfection.

Peaceful, serene she remained, even as the world around her convulsed, contorted, spun, wheeled and turned in on itself.

And then... placed gently in her mother's arms.

And all was still......and in the quiet, in the calm, they took their little girl back to themselves again.

Dressed in pink cotton and wrapped in a blanket, and snuggled alongside her a yellow teddy bear - small, yet so big next to her tiny frame.
They loved her, wondered at her, stroked her feet, traced her button nose, her rosebud lips, caressed her miniature nails, her hair dark on snow-white skin.

They absorbed her, enveloped her, smelled her.  Their baby girl. And it was so right and it was so wrong and it was desolate and utterly cruel. Yet she was there, so it was truly beautiful.
They felt blessed and cheated and desolate but above all they felt love, such love Thomas.

And their love spun like a thread around her, the warps and the wefts, an invisible blanket cocooning her – and them – forever.

And sometimes when they think they can’t remember her, when her mother wonders whether she imagined those firm little kicks, she reveals herself. A gentle breeze blowing the crowns of the tallest trees: ‘it really happened’ she says. And she is there, playing peek-a-boo, a blink away, above, below, all around, swinging, swinging, throwing her legs into the air, back and forth, crooning made-up songs, higher and higher.

Oh she has taught them so much and they know her well. She is a girly girl, a daddy's girl too. The two of them, conspirators, mischief makers, secret keepers! They know this. She is a happy girl, a laughing girl, a skipping girl, light of foot with the cheekiness of a sprite. A mischievous girl, a poppet in pink pyjamas.

Little Charlotte Grace...you left such a big legacy for such a little girl. And what lessons you have taught! How to love with a fierceness that consumes all, how that love endures, how a heart really can be broken but how it can start to mend itself too, though never quite losing the hairline cracks that will forever remain.

How it is the very worst. But how willingly the pain is borne for the blessing of having had you at all, for being you, for being theirs now and always.

49 minutes...but forever.

xxxx

- Published for and with the permission of Claire and Steve in memory of their darling daughter Charlotte Grace to commemorate Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. 

- http://www.uk-sands.org/