Emma’s Story: A Story of Love & Loss
It had only been a few weeks since we had finished all of the required training classes to become certified as a foster family by the Baltimore City Department of Social Services. We were still an Active Duty military family at the time, so finding the time to commit to such an undertaking was tough. Even when it wasn't as easy as we had wanted, we found a way to get it done in just a couple of weeks. Those details matter because we had lost our first child only a few months prior.
This is where her story begins. It's difficult to remember the exact day we received the email from our attorney, who had been guiding us through the adoption process. At the time, I was a Cryptologic Russian Linguist in the US Army (meaning the Army trained me to speak, read and write in Russian), and I recall being more than two-thirds of the way finished with a language course funded by the Intelligence Community in the Washington, DC area. I was stationed at Fort George G. Meade in Maryland and lived just within the Baltimore City limits, so on top of studying the Russian language for eight-plus hours a day, I was bound to the reliably unreliable Amtrak schedule between Baltimore and DC.
A few weeks prior, we matched with a birth mother in Texas. Not all the details were precise, and she still needed a sonogram, but we were told to get ready because we were having a girl. Her name would be Emma, so that's what hung above her crib.
It happened with an email. To blunt the sharp and painful nature of what we were about to learn next, our attorney chose to use that email to explain that Emma would not live more than a few minutes after taking her first breath. I remember feeling frantic and hopeless as I read those words and even more so as I sat on the train headed home to be with my husband. It was the first time in my life I remember crying in public without considering what those around me might have been thinking.
Even though we never got the chance to meet her, hold her tight, or tell her how much she was loved, she'll always be our first baby.
Emma's story is incredibly painful even to this day. The door to her bedroom, where her name hung above what was supposed to be her crib, stayed closed for weeks. Regrettably, we could not attend her funeral and have yet to visit her in Texas. I know that we will someday. Not only is it essential for Grace and Charlotte to learn her story, but for all of us to get the chance to say goodbye in person.
In reality, Emma's story hasn't ended. She is why we completed the foster care training and moved forward with our dream of becoming parents. She made us stronger and more determined to become a family, and we do our best every day to remember the joy she brought us.
