Memorial service.

The kicker with this is that we started writing these the day after we lost her - we felt SO strongly that we wanted to remember her life and not her death.


First are the readings that we picked, then what we wrote.

1st reading: Isaiah 25:6a, 7-9

A reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples.
On this mountain he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples,
The web that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death forever.
The Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces;
The reproach of his people he will remove from the whole earth; for the Lord has spoken.
On that day it will be said:
"Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us!
This is the Lord for whom we looked;
let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!"

The word of the Lord.


2nd reading: 1 John 3:1-2

A reading from the first Letter of Saint John:

Beloved:
See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.
Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

The word of the Lord.

Gospel: John 14:1-6

A reading from the holy Gospel according to John:

Jesus said to his disciples:
"Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me.
In my Father's house there are many dwelling places.
If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself,
so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going you know the way."
Thomas said to him, "Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?"
Jesus said to him, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

The Gospel of the Lord.

Opening

A lot of you have already heard the end of the story -- the bad parts. How this was the worst thing that was ever happened to us. We aren't going to get into that today. Instead, we wanted to talk about the good parts -- how she was the best thing that ever happened to us. It occurred to us that, while we lost a daughter, our parents lost a granddaughter, our siblings lost a niece, our nephews & nieces lost a cousin, and so on. But no one but us really got a chance to get to know our little Olive. So we wanted to tell you about her.

"Turtle"

Our first nickname for her wasn't "olive" -- it was well before we knew that she was a "she", and we called her "turtle". At our first doctor's appointment, they looked at her on the ultrasound, and there she was: at 7 weeks, we could discern her body and little arm and leg buds that made her look like a swimming turtle. We saw her little heartbeat for the first time too.

"Spatula"

When people learn that you are pregnant, the first thing they ask is when the due date is. The next thing they ask is what names you're thinking about. We did have some names in mind, but didn't want to decide until she was born. So, in keeping with the modern tradition of obscure baby names, whenever someone asked we said we were naming her "Spatula Bernadine". L'il Spatchy.

"Tiny Dancer"

Some weeks later, at another appointment, they were checking her out on the ultrasound, and she was putting on a show for the nurses -- spinning and kicking and dancing in the womb. She wouldn't be her mother's daughter if she wasn't performing. We tried to encourage her artistic side by playing her Mozart and Metallica. Later, she would be serenaded by her daddy's moving a cappella, falsetto version of "Don Gato", a song he learned in elementary school. We tried not to alarm her when we yelled at the TV when watching Packers and Bears games, and reassured her that Mommy and Daddy only rooted against each other when those two teams played each other. We told ourselves that when she was older she would learn to root for the right team.

"Modesty"

It took us several more appointments to find out that she was a she. We were receiving ultrasounds every two weeks and once we reached the point where we should be able to see twig & berries, we were intently gazing at blurry white-on-gray images on the ultrasound looking for clues. It was like a medical Rorschach test, or interpreting tea leaves. Every time the goo went down on my belly, she would be turned a certain way, fidget at just the right time so that we couldn't get a clear look at the, *ahem*, parts-region. Our daughter, it seemed, was very modest, and wasn't going to show without a fight. We kept joking that she was a Baptist.

"87.5%"

After three ultrasounds where we should have been able to spot *something*, DH, being the nerd that he is, made a calculation and found that there was a 87.5% chance that it was a girl. The ultrasound techs gave a 75% chance (but don't think that was backed up by firm statistics), and our Maternal Fetal Specialist said he was "pretty sure"... but DH had numbers. At our next appointment, we got some very clear pictures -- it was indeed a girl. Pink, here we come.

"Put up your dukes. I'm tuff."

It wasn't long after that when the kicking began. And kick she did. Probably as part of her dance routine we saw the earliest versions of on ultrasound. We imagined her in a fight for space with my internal organs. "Put up your dukes," we imagined her saying to my spleen, "I'm tuff." As Olivia grew, she focused her pugilistic tendencies -- her technique having evolved to a Billy Banks-style Tae-Bo kickboxing on my bladder. I had to step in and call time every couple hours by going to the bathroom.

"Alien baby"

DH, of course, had been feeling Olivia kick ever since she first started stirring. He was well-prepared for feeling the kicks. What he wasn't as prepared for was *seeing* the kicks. We would be sitting on the couch at home, and, when looking over at me, DH would *see* my belly being pushed up, and that was freaky. I would put her cell phone on my belly and we would watch it bounce around like it was one of those new-fangled ringtones. Like there was some Alien-style monster trying to break its way out.

"NSTs"

Her stubborn streak continued. Stubbornness combined with calisthenics. We were heading into Labor & Delivery early every Tuesday morning for an NST, or Non-Stress Test. For those who don't know -- don't be fooled by the name, it was quite stressful for us. She, I'm sure, was fine. In fact, since by the time we got in there we had already had breakfast, little Olivia was up and doing her morning jumping jacks -- making it a little tricky at first to do the NST, because she kept moving. We'd find her heartbeat, and everything would be fine for a minute, or 5 seconds, and she would shift and we'd lose it, forcing a very patient nurse to move the mic around to find it again. Our first NST, which usually only needs a good 20 minutes, took about an hour. She was probably in there challenging the nurse to put up her dukes.

"Her"

The later ultrasounds we had started to show what our little girl looked like, and we started to settle on the name "Olivia". On one of our amniotic fluid check ultrasounds we had a clear shot of her hand -- DH kept it in his office because it looked like she was waving to her Daddy (or, given its bear-claw type appearance, suggesting to him which team she would choose to root for). We could see a full head of hair floating around in that amniotic fluid, and we have a great shot of the lower part of her face -- that was our last ultrasound. It wasn't until she was born that we found that she had DH's hair -- dark and curly. She had my chin and nose but DH's little upper lip divot. She was a [my last name] and a [DH's last name] and a [DH's mom's maiden name] and a [my mom's maiden name]. She was beautiful.

Closing

Olivia, being derived from the word "olive", the branch of which is the symbol of peace, means peaceful. We know that she can't be here in person, but we will always carry her in our hearts, and know she is at peace.

We'd like to end by having our cousin Becky come up and read a passage from Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night".

Twelfth Night, Act One, Scene Five

Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out 'Olivia!' O, You should not rest
Between the elements of the air and earth,
But you should pity me!