Page 109 - Middle Georgia State University - Knighted 2019
P. 109

shadowy figures patiently waiting for her arrival, which was coming very soon. Jonathan wasn’t
there when our daughter Aidan Kennedy Lee slid into the world; he arrived moments later.

         The shadowy figures had her, holding her under the lamp as she glistened, shiny pink and
slippery looking. Her chest compressing up and down as she struggled to take in and process air
in her lungs. Aidan made her debut in the pre-dawn hours Monday weighing just under a pound
(0.450 kilograms to be exact), looking like her brother Joshua but extremely small. They
wrapped her in a pink knitted blanket that was big for her small frame, and left Jonathan and me
with her in a basket that you would put bread rolls in. Emptiness and silence filled the room the
nitric oxide was slowly beginning to fade. My stomach twisted and released the spaghetti I ate
earlier onto the floor. My stomach, my womb, and my spirit hollow.

         Eleven days later huddled close together, Jonathan holding Joshua in his arms, and I
glued to his side our hands locked together and heads bowed listened as the Reverend read
scriptures and poems we selected. When the last words of the final poem were spoken. The
conveyer belt with a small box traveled away from us. On a Thursday afternoon, Aidan Kennedy
Lee was cremated. She returned home with us in maple brown box to our pale-yellow bricked
home in Thetford.

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