I haven’t written in awhile and there are still a few parts of Ava’s story remaining that I haven’t shared. These are the parts and the details I want to put down on “paper” before too much time passes and I forget them. For the next few posts, I’m going to continue telling the rest of Ava’s story because I need to make sure it is complete. If not for your sake, or hers, then for mine…

After spending a few days together we let the staff take Ava away. Actually, we had to give her away. No one came asking for her, which in a way would have made it easier for me. Instead, we had to voluntarily decide it was time to hand her over to allow them to perform a limited autopsy. I gave her body to Travis and he left our room only to return moments later with just her clothes and blanket. She was gone. That was about the time when my brain shut off and the world began to operate around me. Travis went into action and continued making arrangements for her body while mine continued through the motions of life as the rest of my soul seemed to just check out.

There was never a question in our minds about what to do with her remains, in fact, another option never crossed our minds. We knew we wanted a burial. The only question was, where? Travis and I were in our early 30’s, we had no plans for our own burials, so we didn’t even know where to start with our daughter. Truth be told, I never even really thought about it, I just assumed we would bring her “home” to Minnesota where we are both from and where my grandparents are buried. But then Travis mentioned the cemetery near our home in Colorado. About a half mile up the road from our house, off the same main street, is a beautiful cemetery that sits on the top of a hill with an incredible view. When we first moved into the neighborhood our mailbox was located just a little further up the hill and we would walk past it every few days as we made the trek to pick up our junk mail. When I was pregnant with Logan we would take walks through the cemetery and explore the headstones that contained the history of our small town as we even considered some of the unique names as possible names for our baby. We always thought it was a peaceful place and now we were considering it as a final resting place for our daughter. I wasn’t sure. It felt strange not to bring her home to Minnesota, to not have her in a Jewish cemetery, or with her family. I didn’t want her to be alone. Then we started talking about the real purpose of a burial and a cemetery. It isn’t for the dead at all, but for the living. The cemetery was for us. It would serve as a place for us to go to visit our baby and having her over 500 miles away in Minnesota would not bring us comfort. We wouldn’t be able to go visit her when we were sad and we feared we would feel even more like she was missing from our lives if she was so far from us. On top of it all, getting her to Minnesota would have been a logistical nightmare, and traveling there for her funeral immediately after my c-section would have been horrendous. I didn’t feel too strongly one way or the other and Travis did. We decided to take her home to the cemetery near our house.

And when I say we decided to take her home, we really decided we were taking her home. But much like the burial, another option didn’t even cross our minds, we had to take her ourselves. We didn’t want her transported by some stranger that we didn’t know or trusted and to be honest, how ridiculous of a fee would it have been to have someone drive over 400 miles round trip to come get her body to bring her back to our little mountain town. No, we were taking her home. Travis informed the hospital of our plans and everyone seemed a little baffled as to how that was going to happen. It turns out this was not commonly done and apparently there’s a lot of bureaucratic red-tape and legal mandates when it comes to transporting a dead body. We had to have the proper clearance and proper paperwork because without it, we might look a bit suspicious if we happened to be pulled over with a dead baby in our car. And police aside, a funeral home would not accept her body without paperwork. So Travis put the nursing supervisor for the hospital to task with figuring out how we were going to be allowed to bring our baby home. He made no promises and told us he would do his best, and we told him we weren’t leaving without our baby.

In the meantime, Travis did what he does best. He jumped into action and made arrangements with a local funeral home while his mom found us a local rabbi near our house and wrote an obituary. Travis researched Jewish burial laws and customs and made sure everyone was clear on what needed to happen. I don’t remember what I did. I think my mind was consumed by trying to just continue breathing. We met the rabbi over Facetime and he went to work on writing her service. We set a date for her funeral, finalized the obituary and with the help of family, sent a notice to the local paper.

Ava was born on a Monday morning. That Thursday we were all released from the hospital. The nursing supervisor had worked his magic and we were going to be allowed to bring our daughter home ourselves. It was unprecedented. The hospital didn’t usually do this. We were instructed that once we took possession of her body we were to leave hospital grounds immediately. Travis loaded up the car and pulled it to the front entrance while I was brought down in a wheelchair. At the main registration desk, Travis signed the legal forms and was given a carbon copy followed by a large styrofoam cooler containing our baby. The hospital staff wished us well and we were escorted to our car and off the premises. We were all going home.