I Shut the Door

I shut her casket door. Or rather we did. But for now, I am only going to talk about my side of it....

How could I shut that door? How could I say goodbye. I didn't want to and I still wish I hadn't. I just wanted to keep holding her. My dead baby girl. She shouldn't be in this white box. She shouldn't have makeup on or be without her blanket. I just wanted to keep holding her. That's right. You may not have known this. I'm not sure if any one does but we held her. After the funeral I picked my baby girl up out of her casket and held her. I cried. I brushed her hair. I kissed her sweet, soft, cold skin. I held her hand. But she couldn't hold mine. Can you imagine holding your cold, dead baby? The little girl who never got to open her eyes to see her mommy and daddy.

I tried to open one of her eyes. It was before we took her off the machines. I just wanted to see what color they were, but I couldn't see. I knew and know that most babies' eye color doesn't develop for several months. And at first they almost always look black. It felt so wrong trying to open them but I just wanted to know what color Addison's eyes were.

She was wearing a diaper. My poor baby girl had a diaper on at her funeral. I don't even know what size it was. Diapers are for accidents. They are for children who have not yet learned to control their need to go potty. Why would Addison be wearing a diaper??? Well, they don't make underwear her size. Because babies always wear diapers.

I got to change her diaper once in the hospital, before we held her. Although she had a catheter in, she had a stinky diaper. I don't even know if that's what new born baby stinky diapers are supposed to look like. I so wish I could just change her diaper again. I could do some mommy thing for my baby. But you know what? In the moment I almost didn't worry about how good of a job I did, you know why? Dead babies don't get diaper rash.... At least not to my knowledge. So if I didn't quite get it all, it wasn't like her skin was going to have long to react. But really, the reason why I wasn't meticulous about it was because I was scared. She was hooked up to so many machines. I didn't want to bump one or cause her any more pain by lifting her bottom by holding her ankles up. She looked like she was in enough discomfort.

I have only one single picture of me holding Addison while she was alive. Just one. There was a photographer there to take pictures. She took pictures of us giving Addison her first, last, and only bath. She captured the moments of us getting all the bubbles in her hear and being more delicate than we have ever been, because she was still hooked up to all the machines. I couldn't bear to wonder if my baby would die as we gave her her first bath. And I couldn't bear to bath her as she got cold after her heart stopped beating. There were pictures taken of Daddy holding Addison and an alive family picture without us leaning over her hospital bed. There were pictures of me singing to her and us kissing her as she left her body... The SD card malfunctioned. They are gone. Stuck as the best memories I can conjure up. Professionals have attempted to unlock or fix the SD card. It was unsuccessful. So, by elimination, now you know that all these "pretty pictures" of Addison were not taken when she was breathing. Her heart was not beating. She was cold.

You may not like how I have spoken about these things but it's real. It happened. It still happens over and over in my head. I would give anything to have not had to close that casket.

With sorrow and loss and mourning and anger and tears,

Addison's Mommy