Thanks Baby H

Thank you Baby H.

There are babies everywhere in my life. Number of pregnant friends: 3. Number of friends who have given birth this year: 3. Number of babies born to friends to date: 14. Number of friends on baby-making duty: at least 3 that I know of. Conception and birth is a complex and miraculous phenomenon. The fact that so many are born healthy is astounding almost beyond belief.

Not all births have this happy-ending. Sometimes things go wrong, like it did for my friends just a few weeks ago. Their baby was born with a serious heart defect. She passed away peacefully a few short hours after her delivery.

No one understands really how one child is born healthy and another dies crippled by the vicissitudes of nature.

What lesson or gift can we find in the death of a baby? There seems no rhyme or reason for it, such is the depth of grief and incomprehension with the death of a newborn child.

And yet we see something miraculous and precious in grief. This little bundle of cells, misshapen and unviable, is loved so deeply and so profoundly by its parents that they know she is perfect in every way, even if her body does not comply with the laws of physics and biology.

This is the gift we find in grief: the parents’ love of a little thing that will never speak, never see, and lived only a few hours. Their love is profound, eternal, without judgement, and filled with a faith and gratitude that inspires and transcends.

Even in the deep grief that they feel, they are so grateful for sharing the experience of their daughter’s brief life. It revealed to them personally the miracle of life: this energy is a strong pulse that vibrates through all physical beings. It creates physical form as a temporary holding place for the spirit. As the spirit is eternal, it matters not the brevity of the physical experience, only that it was profound.

This little child passed but briefly through physical form but she opened up the hearts and minds of those she touched to the great giant ocean of abundance and love of which this universe is made. Those who know of her passing have opened their hearts to the miracles in their own lives. She opened the tap of love and gratitude to those who heard her heart-wrenching story.

Though her breaths were few on this planet, that child felt deep love from her parents, and her parents were filled to bursting with love and pride in the little life they helped bring in to the world. It is an exquisite and pure emotion of the highest vibration.

We all have this kind of love within us. We can feel it any time – we do not need a birth or a death to remind us of the precious miracle of life and good fortune we have to experience its wonders. It is only that sometimes we shut ourselves off from the source of this love. Our petty fears, doubts, and worries creep over us. As we shrink with these lowly feelings, we imagine ourselves isolated and small. We weep and lament and pinch off the flow of love and life. We forget that we are all connected – plants, trees, animals, bugs, humans, stars – we are all part and parcel of the same wonderful universe. We need only open our hearts to it, like we did when a little girl died.

So for this I am grateful – the life and death of a little girl and the love she showed us all in her brief visit to our precious planet.