Dear Emily,
Today should have been your tenth birthday, and tomorrow is ten years since you entered Heaven. I just wanted to tell you we still miss you and sometimes I still see the gap in our family where you’d fit in. (Although to be honest, given how crazy things have been here lately, you might be glad you’re missing out on all the action.)
Since you’re in Heaven, I imagine you have awesome birthday parties and that if you pester God to give you a pony for your birthday, you stand a reasonable chance of getting it. So have fun, and eat an extra slice of cake in my honor.
I usually imagine you as an adult, being a saint and fighting evil and maybe running scary missions with an angelic SWAT team which would have me sweating bullets if I knew about them. I pictured you that way even in the early days after you died. I don’t usually imagine you growing up, keeping pace of the girl you would have been if you’d survived. But on your birthday it’s easier to imagine you chronologically consistent. And now you’d be ten.
I can’t get to your grave this year to decorate it, due to the recent family chaos, but I bought you a pinwheel and I was planning to plant some flowers on your grave. We’ll have a cake here for you anyhow, and tonight we’ll sing you Happy Birthday.
Pray for us, sweetie. I know you’re doing all right, but we still miss you.
Love,
Mommy
Dear Emily Rose
Your Momma is a wonderful woman and a talented writer, but I’m sure you already know this. Even though you’re not here in person, I feel like I’ve known you ever since I first read about you on an internet forum. I dreamt about you once after re-reading the story of your birth. You were playing with a red balloon in a field of wildflowers, running barefoot with your hair in pigtails.
Blessings to you on the anniversary of your birth precious child xxx
Amen.
So beautiful.