Forty-Three Years Waiting For Emily

I’ve been waiting for you, for such a long time.”

Those words have lived inside me for decades, since 1982, when I first knew you were there. My sweet baby girl, Emily. From the very beginning, you were always on my mind. I dreamed of you as if you were already here. I imagined your fingers curling around mine, the rhythm of your breathing, the sound of your first cry. I would lie awake at night, whispering into the darkness, waiting to hold you tight.

The waiting was sweet, and it was filled with love. But it ended far too soon.

No mother forgets the silence that comes when life should be beginning. That day in the hospital, everything shifted. I saw you, and even though you were still, you were so perfectly formed, so impossibly delicate. “Now that I do, and look at you, my heart is breaking. This can’t be true.” And yet it was. You were gone before I could hold you in the way I longed to, before I could kiss your forehead or hear your voice. Lost you before I found you. Gone before you came. But I loved you just the same.

Grief is not something that expires. It does not fade neatly with the years, as people sometimes think it should. It changes shape, it softens, but it never disappears. Forty-three years later, the ache still finds me. It arrives quietly, in unexpected moments—when I see a mother rocking her baby, when I notice a birthday that should have been yours, when I pass a little girl’s dress in a store and feel tears rise without warning. Missed you before I met you. On earth we never can. But in heaven we’ll meet again.

Through all these years, you have remained close to my soul, close to my heart, right from the start. I have carried you in ways no one could see. You have lived in my prayers, in my quiet thoughts, in the spaces between milestones. You were absent in every family photo, yet you were also always there, because a mother never stops loving her child, no matter how brief their life was.

Sometimes I wonder who you would have been. Would you have had my laugh? Would you love books, or music, or the feel of rain on your skin? Would you have children of your own by now, making me a grandmother? These questions linger, unanswered, but they remind me that your life, however short, mattered.

The pain has often left me wondering what to do with it, how to carry it without letting it consume me. Sometimes I find myself wondering what to do with this pain that I’m going through. And the answer, I’ve learned, is that you don’t get rid of it. You honor it. You let it shape you. You let it teach you how fragile life is and how fierce love can be. You let it show you how to hold onto others a little tighter, how to cherish what you are given while you have it.

Faith has been my anchor in all of this. It was faith that carried me when grief hollowed me out, faith that reminded me of a promise greater than pain. I believe with all my heart that one day, this separation will end. But I know one day, God will take me away, and I’m coming home to you. That promise has carried me through forty-three years.

Back in 1982, I was waiting to meet you on this earth. Now, I am waiting for the day I will see you in heaven. I believe you will be there, whole and smiling, waiting with outstretched arms. And when that day comes, I will finally hold you, and I will never let go. All the years of sorrow will dissolve into eternity.

Emily, my sweet baby, you have been gone forty-three years, but you are not forgotten. Lost you before I found you. Gone before you came. But I love you just the same. Missed you before I met you. On earth we never can. But in heaven we’ll meet again.

Until then, I will keep remembering, keep loving, and keep waiting. Because love, once given, never dies. It stretches across time, across space, and across eternity.

I’ve been waiting for you, for such a long time. And one day, my waiting will be over.