A Final Memorial for Emily

Last week I received a letter from the hospital where we delivered Emily. The letter was informing us of when the infant memorial service is going to be held. After Emily died my husband and I had to decide what to do with Emily's body. There were several different options provided to us, but ultimately we decided to let the hospital cremate her body and then bury her ashed along with the other infant who had died the previous year. There were many reasons for the decision that we made, and even to this day I am still comfortable with the choice that we made.

The memorial service will be held on September 15 at Evergreen-Washelli Cemetery in Seattle, Washington.

We plan to make the drive as a family and attend the memorial service. We are taking Maddie with us. I feel like it is very important to include her in this. I don't think there has been a time that I ever considered not attending. I know that we have already said good-bye to Emily and we had the closure that we needed, but at the same time I want to go through this final act of saying good-bye.

As I am writing this, I am thinking about how hard this service might actually be for me. Since we did not have any kind of memorial for Emily after she died this is the final closure. But attending this memorial, almost 19 weeks pregnant is something that just hit me. If we had not lost Emily, we would not be expecting this new baby. This new life would not have been possible if we had Emily in our arms today.