Lucky Ducks

Right after I got home from the hospital I made a CD of music to listen to in the car. I googled "songs about stillborns" and then downloaded them, not really knowing if they were lame-o or not. One of those songs was "I Will Carry You (Audrey's Song)". I didn't know anything about it, and I actually didn't listen to it too much at first.

A week or two ago, my sister sent me a book from amazon.com.  She said that a friend highly recommended it.  This is the book:

So, I started to read it.  And I read and read and read. 

The author, Angie Smith, lost her daughter Audrey at birth. She and her husband knew that Audrey would not survive when she was born.  The book is about her journey through pregnancy (knowing the whole time her daughter would not live), through Audrey's birth, and life after Audrey.

I finally realized, about 20 pages in, that this was the same Audrey that the song I downloaded was about. Angie's husband is a singer in the band Selah (had no idea who they were) and they wrote this song together after Audrey was born.

So, I went to my iPod and listened to the song over and over.  It carries so much more weight now that I know the background of the song, and the guy singer is Audrey's daddy.

I wish I could copy and past the whole book into this blog, so you could read it.  But, I'm pretty sure I would be arrested.  Or something.

Here are some of her thoughts (Copyright Police- could you please give me some warning before you arrest me?  I'll gladly do a bibliography or whatever.  I think I still have my APA manual somewhere.):

"...Now I have to trust a different side of God the Father.  Will You tell her all about me and what I would have been to her? Will You show her glimpses of how we would have lived life together?

My heart is breaking because I want her to know that I would have painted her little toenails and taken her to swimming lessons. I didn't want to miss it all.  Will you tell her how much she was loved and how much we will always mourn her absence?"

Her thoughts when she is at Audrey's grave:

"I know she isn't really in there; it's just that her knees are, and I would have loved to kiss them after she fell. I need to mourn the loss of the arms that cannot wrap around me here.  Braided hair, a wedding dress, her first wiggly tooth.  They are deep within the ground, never to be mine."

And, now that I know about her song and book, she is showing up all over the place. In fact, she has a blog that she wrote throughout her journey (http://audreycaroline.blogspot.com/) and she used excerpts from her blog in her book.

Below is the video they made with the song as well as pictures from before, during, and after Audrey's birth.  Audrey lived for 2 hours. Lucky ducks.