May 30th, 2019 that’s a day I’ll never forget. It’s the day my family lost… I lost our baby girl, Kimana Elaine. She was fine that morning, two hours later I was bleeding out and being rushed to the ER. After waking up in recovery, her dad cried as he told me she was gone… But I knew, from the moment I saw the blood at home and my oldest daughter couldn’t get her to move.
I posted on Facebook because I didn’t know what else to do.. I was still in shock, recovering, and groggy. An old friend from Japan who now works as a Labor and Delivery nurse reached out and told us about Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (NILMDTS) and the services they offered to grieving families. Because of my her, a NILMDTS photographer came to the hospital and photographed our daughter …and I’ll forever be grateful.
It had to have been about an hour before we heard the knock on our hospital door followed by the photographer coming into our room. I was rocking my baby. My perfect little baby right after they took out all the tubes. That was my first memory of her, all the tubes.
My nurse took her own pictures for me after they took them out, and the NILMDTS photographer was the perfect match for us, too. For a while, our photographer just observed us capturing the natural moments of our family all together with Kimana Elaine. When he did pose us, they were perfect too, all beautifully capturing our daughter.
He cried with us and smiled with us, he almost felt like part of the family honestly. He managed to capture my favorite picture of Kimana and I. Heartbroken, yet full of love. That is what grief looks like and he captured it.
That one photo, I still look at to this day. I have them all, but this one, from every angle you could see Kimana smiling at me as I stroked her cheek, promising that we loved her, and would wait for her no matter how long it took. I’m grateful for all the pictures but that picture and the ones with her dad and siblings… Those are the ones captured a baby that, although she never came home, knew nothing but love.
Give the gift of remembrance to a bereaved family today
