Dear Grace: A Letter to the Daughter I’ll Never Meet

Every year is a sad and a joyful year. So much happened in 2021, so much insanity and wonder, so much beauty plucked from the jaws of stupidity, so much insight salvaged from the wreckage of things we never thought could break. “It was the best of times and the worst of times,” as Dickens put it.

One of the sad and joyful things that happened to me this year is that my dear one and I conceived and then lost a baby. We called her the Seahorse, because that’s how she looked to us in the early ultrasounds. Once we knew she was a girl, we called her Grace.

It was a joyful thing because I felt for a time chosen and anointed by life. The idea that I would get to be a father seemed fantastical, mysterious beyond description, an unthinkable redemption.

It was a sad thing, of course, because it turned out Grace had trisomy 13 affecting every organ of her tiny body. Carried to term, she would have suffered terribly for a few hours, days, or months, and then died in uncomprehending pain. So, we decided the kind thing to do would be to let her go.

Before we did, I wrote her this letter…

Dear Grace,

Some shipwrecked sailors say no one should ever have been released into this sea, no seahorse or starfish or shark or otter, for the water is too cold, the rocks too sharp, the coral too shot with poison. We can’t really argue with them. It’s a cold ocean. No one can say it isn’t.

For our part, we’ve decided to keep swimming, and make what we can of the voyage. That’s because we’ve found something in the swimming. It doesn’t make the water warm. That’s just a dream some people dream to quiet themselves. But perhaps it makes it worth it — and sometimes, beautiful.

Sometimes hand in hand we linger in meadows fathoms deep, and fingers of green light caress our hair. Or something crystalline glows from sandy caves below, and we swim toward it, and in the swimming we sense the presence of something that cannot be a mistake.

Very soon, Grace, our arms will fail us, and our swim too will be over. Perhaps then, after all, we will come to agree with those gloomy sailors, marooned in their ghost ships. Perhaps then we will believe like they do that it was all a sad and foolish waste and ruin.

But if in the end we still think there was something worthwhile here, it will be because of the swimming we did. Our arms danced like wings of gulls, our eyes peered mightily through the saltwater, our lungs labored over the breakers before they plunged us down again.

But with no arms for dancing, no eyes for peering, no lungs for the fight, what good is it? By what emblem can we set you into the storm, knowing nothing awaits you but cold?

That is why we have decided to excuse you, and send you back to the whirlpool of light.

Destined to lose everything, we console ourselves with having had it. Without the having, what’s the use?

The moon rises over endless waves of strength and failure, and a dirge in our bellies says this is no ocean for you. We’re sorry we couldn’t make a better welcome for you, you who meant everything. We too are at the mercy of these tides, who, in their majesty, show no mercy.

It feels strange to decide this. What a terrible entitlement. And perhaps we’re wrong. But we were charged to guard you, and this is our best attempt, our best flailing guess as we ourselves slowly drown. And so, we hoist sail in the stark wind of conscience, which some sailors call God, and set a course. We do it mournfully, Grace, for you. If only you could understand.

And what’s left in the ruins of you is to thank you. You came a mighty teacher, you blind rainbow, our helpless lady, our spineless seahorse, and left us richer, wiser, better outfitted to know the whale song, to spy sapphires in the sea floor, to swim the churning waters. We never swam, not really, until you came.

Love,

Your Skippers,

B & E