Angelina
by Andrea DiMaggio
Like Billie Bigelow from Carousel, perhaps on the distaff side after a very long hiatus, I sit here and look at this picture and marvel out what you might have become. It struck me that you might have turned out just like her. Red hair like three of your great-grandmothers. Your mother's eyes and resolve behind them. Your brother's wit and charm and sarcasm, a DiMaggio forte'? And sensitivity.
The piercings? The jewelry? A bit adventurous, aye? Well, your mother did bobsled at Lake Placid, even if it was 'only a practice run,' and like your brother says, she jumped out of a perfectly good airplane at 4000 feet, and that when they didn't do tandem and you only trained for a day. A sense of adventure, occasionally expressed as haste, which is only slightly mitigated by my measured, careful approach; what your brother might say is a bit stodgy?
Music...you'd probably have a good voice like your mother...or maybe not so good like your grandmother or your brother, but we DiMaggios do quite well at auditory self-medication for attention deficiencies. You might even have learned to play the piano. I know you'd love music...it's in both sides of the family.
Tenacity...I bet you'd never have given up...ever. Your Mom never ever gave up on me. And loyalty, like your brother; a truer friend no one ever had. I miss you, though I don't say that nearly enough. Oh, gosh, I know you never saw the light of day...you never got to take a single breath, but as God was and is our witness, you would have been such a great girl. We named all of you sibs, you know...that's what the counselor said to do...Closure they called it. Angelina, Anthony and Seraphina you've met...Giuseppe says hello, even if it's just Joe down here. And of course your Mom loves you more than ever. She just told me the other day through her tears. And I can't wait to meet you. I need to get it all sorted out? Will you be very tiny and grow once we get there, or are you in your true form?
I've found that life brings folks into your life that you can love and fall in love with even if you've never met them. You've got a whole group of people down here who are related to you by blood that missed you when you were taken. But there are a whole bunch of people down here whom we've never met that probably would love you just as much. They've shown that almost every day in the way they've loved me and your mom and your brother, too.
"My little girl...pink and white as peaches and cream is she..."
I love you, dear one. Til Then
Soliloquy
from the musical
Carousel
music and words by
Rogers and Hammerstein
performed by Gordon MacRae
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVqoc_GOH-0
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Comments
Thank you 'Drea,
ALISON
'there are so many of us who have never met but love each other because of what we share,and we do have so much to share.
ALISON
Hey Gram...
Isn't she amazing??? She says more in a few words than some suthors say in multi chaptered tomes. This one is also for the file.
Always a...
Brat
Angelina
Short,sweet, Lovely.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
my mother lost a baby after 3 days of life
So I think I understand a bit of that kind of grief. But take comfort in the knowledge you will meet your little girl again.
"You can survive a couple of weeks without food. You can survive a couple of days without water. You can even survive a couple of minutes without air. But you cannot survive for even a minute without hope."
Dorothycolleen
My Aunt Winnie had a couple stilborns
Fairly late term too, both with her first husband. Rh inconpatablity killed them. This happend ten years before I was born
My mom lost babies three times ... before and beween the three she did give birth to. Fotunately they were all fairly early term but one would have been twins. So mom was three out of four overall. And my late older sister was born badly disabled.
Mom loved us all but there was a hint of sadness behind her loving, quiet nature.
I don't know how she held it together. As tough and resiliant as my dad was and still is she was by far the tougher in her way. How can one stand the pain of being a mother?
Now you made me cry, Drea.
John in Wauwatosa
John in Wauwatosa
Likewise, I was supposed to
Likewise, I was supposed to have an older half-sister named Margaret, by my dad's first marriage, and though she wasn't stillborn, she did pass of SIDs when she was only a month or two old, I think. I don't know the exact details because her death destroyed my dad for years. It was only in the last few years that he was able to come to terms with it - and to put that into perspective, she would've been in her late 30s.
I immortalized her memory in Becoming Robin but only told one person about that up until now.
It's entirely possible that Margaret might have been as off-the-wall insane as dad's ex-wife, but it's equally possible I could've had a loving step-sister to turn to for advice in my own trials over the years. I try not to dwell on what might have been, but there are times when I wish I could know.
Thank you 'Drea, for writing and posting this, even if it did make me cry :-)