March 25, 1952. “Christena”
Before me, my parents had a daughter, Christina Fawn. Christina lived a few hours, then was gone. She is buried near her mom and dad’s grave, on the knoll above Rockhouse Holler, under a simple headstone befitting a baby. On the stone is carved her simple name.
I can’t really miss her, since I never knew her, but I’ve missed her all my life. If you’ve lost a baby or a young sibling you understand that sentence. When I woke up, she was already gone.
Here’s another sentence: “Christina lived a few hours, then was gone.” As I typed it, I started with “she”, but something pulled in my mind: “say Christina.” Her name has been said so few times. I don’t mean the word “Christina” of course, for there are lots of Christinas out there whose names fill the air around them and hopefully will, for many long years. But we each somehow inhabit our name uniquely, and our name is then much more than the letters that spell out the word. “Christina” is hers, only hers, without subtracting from the others who share the label. Her name is perpetual, now, since on the stone is carved her name.
There must have been a midnight conversation back there in time where mom and dad decided “Christina, then”. That’s what we’ll name her.” Then they’ll say it to themselves, mentally, for the weeks they wait for her labor, and each time it’ll feel a little more like the baby who they feel they know, who just needs a face to finish the mental portrait. It’s her, it’s Christina. Christina kicks. Christina grows. When do you think Christina will come? Better get some diapers in here before Christina takes us by surprise. And so on.
I know nothing about that conversation, and, amazingly, nothing about why or where “Fawn” came from. Nobody else in the family had those names. A fawn is a baby deer, after all.
We want to imagine what her life would have been like, but it doesn’t really work. But that doesn’t stop the imagining. The pictures in my mind still want to start, and then a rapid flipshow of toddler, teen, high school, wedding photos, babies (my nieces and nephews) and so on. Would she go grey sooner than I did? Would I know, or would she color her hair?
None of this works, I say.
There’s nobody to visit her stone except my siblings and I, and we’re old. And since none of us knew her, we only visit when we go to see mom and dad’s grave and then, right as we start to walk back to the car, “oh, and that’s our sister Christina” we say, to whoever might be on the knoll with us.