for Ella Capri Malekian

This is not the time to tell you
a story I have probably told you
many times before, but I will
do it anyway—

about your second day on the planet,
almost 16 years ago, when your great-uncle
and I came to visit your brand new self
in the hospital.

There we beheld tiny you,
your beautiful but exhausted mama
and your bewildered father, who was
charged with changing your diaper.

He shot me a stricken look,
so, having once upon a time been
pretty handy at such a task
with my own niece and nephew,
I guided your father through
his first diaper change, both of us
grinning and chuckling. It did not
take him long to become a pro.

That was a baptism of sorts,
though your daddy vanished from us
far too soon. I’m sure his great heart
was present today as you were welcomed
into the church where he was baptized
as a tiny boy and where four generations
of your family have worshipped.

Today, as the wife of your first cousin
once removed played “Holy, Holy, Holy”
on your great grandmother‘s organ,
I felt the presence of your ancestors,
some of whom I knew, most of whom
you did not, whoosh in on a wave of love.

They would not miss this. They would—
as they always have been and always will—
be here for you, as well as those of us
gathered in the pews who will love you
far beyond our earthly existences.

That, it turns out, is one of the greatest
miracles of all, taught by a traveling teacher
from Galilee some 2,000 years ago:

that love really is all there is,
that love holds us always,
that you, dear one, are beheld,
cherished for all time
by so many seen and unseen.

Amene.