through a mother's eyes

today after church we took the girls to do some last minute school shopping and as we approached one of our favorite shopping malls i was glancing out the van window. the cemetery where my sister is buried is along the route to the mall and i mentioned to Josh how i would like to stop and show the girls and tell them a little about their aunt. it's really a sad story, one that now that i am a mother touches me far more than it did as a child growing up. you see my sister diana lynn was born premature, nowadays she would be considered a micro-preemie. thirty six and a half years ago there wasn't a lot that could be done for a baby that needed so much medical care. my sister passed a way when she was just four days old. i wasn't born yet actually i was born just a little over a year after her passing. i can remember going to the cemetery with my dad and he would recall how he came to know his baby girl had died. his sadness even so many years later was so apparent. he would tell me how my sister was transferred to a different hospital than where my mom had given birth and how that day he called the hospital to tell them he was on his way to see his tiny baby girl and they told him (over the phone) she had passed away. my dad had to go tell my mom who was still in the hospital recovering that her baby girl would not be coming home. he would talk about the funeral and how tiny she was...like a baby doll and that she had a head full of beautiful black hair. i could almost imagine what that day must have looked like. it breaks my heart to think that when i was younger i believed that it must have been easier to deal with a loss of a newborn because they really didn't "know" her yet. i saw the sadness on my dad's face and heard it in his voice but never in a million years did i really understand. today at the cemetery my heart was broken. i know diana lynn is in heaven but it brought tears to my eyes and an overwhelming sadness to my heart to think what my parents must have gone through all those years ago. today i wondered what diana lynn would have looked like, would she have been married, had children, would we be close? even now as i type this my eyes weld up it's so different when you look at things with mother's eyes. i love my sister and have decided to make more time to visit and remember her.