Humor heals, and kids say the funniest things. I wanted to include some of the lighter memories of Ce with her sisters. When I was almost due, I asked for the girls to write down what they wanted to say to Ce, and here is the list:

I took a photo of Ce and her daddy the night before she died. I handed her to daddy as I started cooking dinner. She slumped into a ball in front of his chest as he sat at the kitchen counter—computer in front of him, with a vase of daises in the background.

As we’ve mentioned in other posts, Cece was a fairly contented baby, except when it came to food. For the last month of Cece’s life, I was trying to teach her to sign, so that when she cried, I knew if she was looking for food, a pacifier, or something else. Initially these attempts were half-hearted, knowing that one-month-olds don’t usually sign, but I stepped up my efforts as Evelyn went back to work in early March.

In the emergency room, they had to override their limits on pressers because AirLife’s limits were higher than the limits at St. Louis Children’s. They intended to enroll her in the MATIC-2 trial but decided otherwise as she seemed to not need a transfusion at the time. This part seemed mostly uneventful, but it took a fair amount of time; we left that room around 11:47pm. They explained they wanted to take a CT because they wanted to see what progression there was on the injury since Carle’s last imaging.

The pre-flight briefing was that our flight would be an hour and 13 minutes. I checked my phone as we lifted off the helipad: 9:45pm. That would put us in St. Louis by 11pm. “Cece, stick with us through this flight— we’re getting you help,” I thought. Up we went through the night sky, giving a unique view of the familiar Urbana skyline. We crossed east of the stadium, directly over the airport, and into the dark fields surrounding our town.

Cece was wheeled up to the PICU while the social worker took me up using a different elevator. Once she got there, they transferred her off of the hospital bed and moved her onto the crib-like bed in the PICU. This was going to be her home until they could get someone to take the transfer. They got her hooked up to the monitoring in the PICU and set up the Arctic Sun to depress her body temperature to 36°C.

出事後才發現我身邊有多少人也是失去過孩子. 我很感謝她們作為過來人在共同的痛苦中分享了經驗. 有位朋友形容哀悼很奇怪, 有時候真的感覺好像沒事了, 一切都過了, 甚至笑得很開心, 但下一陣就可以被悲哀(甚至憤怒)充滿.

After the accident I was reminded of how many of my friends have had losses as well. I am so thankful for these women coming together to share their wisdom in our shared grief.

A huge team crowded around her in the Trauma room. My recollection of this part is faint. There were many people working on Cece, and I've never been in a Trauma room, so I didn't know what they were doing. I was so cold and only had on shorts and a T-shirt, just as I was when I was working on the paper half an hour before. I felt so helpless as an army of medical professionals worked on Cece.

Cece has had an interesting relationship with food since she was born. When she was very small, her tongue often curled up, leaving the nipple or bottle on the wrong side. I often had to wait until she started crying with her mouth open in order to get the bottle in. She was also quite jaundiced, a bit less than our first baby, and each time she ate, she ate very little. She also didn’t like drinking from the breast.

We offered our older children a chance to write their memories of Cece on this website, and they both wanted to share some words.

It took us a few years to want another child. As people imagine, raising kids is not an easy feat. And after having two spirited daughters, YihChun and I debated for many years whether we could handle more.

Many are interested in learning what happened that evening. On Thursday 3/13, around 5:50pm, I was returning home from picking up our big girls (Annie and Abby) from dance. Onboard, there was me (driver), Annie & Baby Ce (2nd row), and Abby (3rd row). As we were halfway through crossing a 4 way stop, an SUV ran their stop-sign and T-boned the van. One minute we were talking about the big girls' upcoming birthday party, and the next we were hit. The SUV was traveling so fast that their car flipped upside down after hitting us.

This is my unfiltered account of what happened after the accident. Some descriptions and photos might be traumatic. If you aren’t ready to read about Cece’s last hours, please look away.

Yih-Chun and I plan to write a series of posts to celebrate Baby Cecelia's life and how our good God is still with us in the midst of pain.