This is a love letter.

My daughter died & was born on 16 September 2020. I wrote this for her community left behind.

This is a love letter. I want to tell you about my daughter, Ruthie Mae. I’ve structured it by questions because I am a structured thinker [1], but it is a love letter. Whether it was with a note, flowers, food, stories, a visit, a donation to her bench, you took time to support me this year. Thank you. I don’t know how to pay you back except with vulnerability. And — by attempting to share my daughter with you.

I. How am I?

These days, I get asked one question a lot: How are you? It is hard to answer. I’m okay — truly. But I want to talk about my daughter. Not to deflect. But because she was beautiful.

II. Was Ruthie real?

This sounds like a harsh question, but Ruthie died before she could inhale air into her own lungs. Do you wonder if she was a person? It is understandable if you do. I’ve thought about it a lot. But then —

— I spent a lifetime dreaming of Ruthie. I spent six months trying to get pregnant with her. I spent nine months making decisions for both her and me: What we ate, how we exercised, when we had a small sip of wine. We went to protests together this summer [2]. I decorated my apartment expecting her to come home. She nudged me and kicked me and rested her head beneath my right ribs. I went through labor with her, and, when the doctors intervened with new information, I weighed it, and I chose to have a c-section, for both her and me. I cradled her body and spoke to it, told it how much I loved the soul it had held. If someone has not had to make the decision whether to cremate or bury their child, and, if cremated, what happens to her ashes, then who are they to define the full scope of parenthood? The person who brushes a child’s teeth, wipes her tears, dresses her for school, feeds her dinner, is a parent. And the person who fed her child from her own body and chose whether or not to get her child’s body autopsied is a parent, too. And if, then, I am a parent, if I am a mother, then by definition I had a child, and that child was a person, as certainly as you or I are a person, and that person had a community, and that community should lift up and celebrate the life of that person, because she belongs to them, and with them, and she deserves their love and remembrance. Quod erat demonstrandum. Yes, she was a person.

III. Who was she?

Her body felt heavy and perfect in my arms. Her skin was soft when I kissed it. It was also cold. She had brown hair that she grew herself, ten little fingers and ten little toes. The fact that she’ll always be something of a mystery to me — What was she thinking? What could she feel? What was her experience like, really? — is nothing more than a hallmark of all human relationships. We never fully know each other. Understanding is not a requisite for acknowledgement of autonomous personhood or for love.

Ruthie was a perinatal infant. She and I spoke to each other in the language of biology and blood. Atoms and heartbeats and flips. The sound of lungs inflating. Pokes and kicks. This language is hard to transcribe. I can’t co-opt her voice. We broke bread together, sharing food. We shared oxygen: I gave her mine. She gave me fetal cells, which I still have, which make me stronger. She gave me confidence and immeasurable amounts of love. In the end, even grief this immense is a small price to pay for that love.

It is unimaginably unfair what was taken from Ruthie. But look at all she gave me. I knew Ruthie as intimately as it is possible to know anybody, which is to say, imperfectly. While I can’t be her voice, I can honor her by not squandering what she gave me.

IV. Is she gone?

Every cloud I see. Every flower. Every spark from every fire. Everything of beauty now makes me think of Ruthie. The painful things, too. Stubbing my toe, getting a paper cut. I think of her. And each time I think of her, I am grateful, even for the pain. All the wonders I had seen I see anew, because the world is new. It holds more within it than I had known. I learned that looking at Ruthie’s face, at her small, shut eyes and her tiny nose, her cold fingers, her fingernails the size of sequins.

Her body might be gone, but the atoms that made it up are not. Our physical presence is not all of us, anyway. I am writing to you, right now, Reader. You are not here, physically in front of me. But you are with me as I write. How could she be gone when she is in everything I see? I can’t imagine that I could love Ruthie more than I do. But love isn’t static. Love begets love. If I am able to give her a sibling, my love for my next child will only enhance my love for Ruthie and visa versa. She is not gone. I know how love works.

V. Who am I now?

I am a micro-chimera. All biological mothers are. When I was in the hospital, my doula and I discussed that while a part of me died when Ruthie died, a part of Ruthie will live as long as I live. I thought we were speaking metaphorically. Scientists say that, actually, this is quite literal. Fetal cells of hers remain alive in me. And my DNA was with her when she was cremated.

I thought that I wanted to be the mother of any living baby. Really, what I wanted was to be Ruthie’s mother. I am. Folks have asked if it hurts to see other people with other babies in strollers on the street. The first week or so it twinged. But generally, it doesn’t, any more than it hurts to see a grown up who managed to survive childbirth walking down the street. (I do find it miraculous that we all survived.) Those other babies in strollers are other human beings who are not my Ruthie. I am happy for their parents. But it is the honor of my life to be Ruthie’s mother.

She was with me in my belly as I gardened with her grandmother all summer long, growing vegetables, eating radishes straight from the ground. She heard us anticipating her, loving her.

VI. Is time fundamentally real or a human construct?

Once I reached the age when I realized that my mum and dad were wonderful humans but not mythical beings, I started to think how wild it is that of all the people who’ve ever lived, in all the ages of humanity, chance put me and my parents in this same tiny time period together. The length of the universe stretches so many billions of years, and the length of our little lives is a particle in an atom in a drop in that bucket. I am so grateful we share this era. And I am grateful that Ruthie shares it with us.

My daughter was named for a poet, Ruth, who lost her seven-year-old son to the pandemic of 1918, and for a scholar, Mae, who died three weeks before Ruthie was conceived. Ruth loved her son dearly, even in his death, and Mae knew she was dying as I was trying to get pregnant. When I was mid-pregnancy, and I first began to tell people Ruthie’s name, it hurt. It loosened my grip on her, gave her over to herself and to the wider world. But I’m so grateful that I did that. I’m grateful that on her last weekend, friends in DC threw a pandemic-safe baby shower for her. She had working ears. She heard them speak her name.

I am jealous of the people who had time with Ruthie’s body, looking at that beautiful face she grew for herself, that I didn’t have. Bathing her while I was passed out. Carrying her to her autopsy. Placing her in her Moses basket and taking her to the crematorium. I wish I could still see all the angles of her beautiful face. But even if she had lived, she would have grown. Had Ruthie lived, I would have lost her little infant face anyway, as it morphed into the face of a little girl. Nothing is constant except change. Nothing is valuable except moments.

VII. How am I?

The last sounds my daughter heard were the air in my lungs and my heart beating. As I push through the grief, one day I’ll be able to think about that without crying. But I’ll still have it, this terrible, beautiful truth. I’ll still know I was with her in her last moment. And that she, who is my heart, heard my heart.

*

As I said, this is a love letter. It is about my daughter. But it is a love letter to you, a member of my community, another person attempting to navigate this mortal coil. It’s a love letter because it is honest and true, to the best of my ability [3]. And because I am grateful for you. I know I am not the only one who experienced loss this pandemic year of wonders. We all have, one way or another. As you stood beside me, I hope I can stand beside you.

As 2020 comes to a close, we have a choice. We can look at this stillbirth as a tragedy that happened to me, something I must overcome, something I should heal from: another example of the pernicious cruelties of life.

Or, we can look at Ruthie, young as she was. My beautiful daughter. Still. Born. A human being whose memory is a blessing. We can claim her — as you’ve claimed me — as a protected member of our community. We can remember her. We can celebrate life.

I choose her.

Rachel Unkovic

Washington, D.C.

December 2020

[1] If I could have written this in a logframe format, I would have.

[2] For the record: Black lives matter and reproductive rights are mandatory.

[3] It’s imperfect. I’ve edited this a lot, and as soon as I send it, I’ll want to edit it again.