It is with a very heavy heart that I write to let you all know that yesterday afternoon we lost another referral. And this time it is a real loss to the whole world. Another baby lost to malaria.
Our precious Baby L was to be called Lisette Josephine. She was chubby and sweet faced. She had chocolate brown eyes and a head full of hair. I imagine from her picture that she had a calm disposition and was a cuddler. But I'll never really know for sure.
I do know for certain that she was loved. Loved by a family an ocean away. Loved by a foster family that had the awful responsibility of preparing her burial and attending her funeral. Loved by a God who knew her little body was suffering terribly and took her home where she would never feel pain or hunger or loneliness again.
I'm going to show you her picture. I want you to know her. I want to show proof that she existed. That she mattered to someone. That she was loved dearly.
I'm really struggling with this loss. It was impossibly hard to be at work today, to make small talk and concentrate on things that suddenly seem so ridiculously unimportant. I wanted just wanted to curl up and lay on the ground.
I know there are probably people out there thinking this is an extreme reaction over a child I never met. And I suppose I should learn to guard my heart. But I just can't. The moment I see that picture for the first time, they're mine. It has happened with all of my kids. I didn't have to carry them in my body for 9 months, I just had to stare at them on my computer for a few hours and they're mine.
So my daughter died yesterday and I just really don't know what to do with that. I never even got to kiss her and tell her I loved her.
Why do babies like Lisette have to die? Maybe so that adults will stop for a moment and look at the way we've screwed up the world.
So the next obvious question is what now?
