00:00:26
Speaker 1: This is Lee h Habibe, and this is our American Stories, and it's time for our Final Thoughts series, where we bring you the final thoughts of folks who are dying and tributes to loved ones who've passed. A eulogy, a poem, anything and everything that stirs the soul. This week's Final Thoughts feature came to us from the terrific website the Federalist dot com, where a father named Jeremy Lott shared his eulogy to his daughter Cecilia, who passed away in a stillborn birth. Jeremy recorded his eulogy as he delivered it at the funeral, and he graciously shared it with us. All here's Jeremy.
00:01:13
Speaker 2: I was going to say that the text of this eulogy is included in your booklets, because its delivery is probably.
00:01:20
Speaker 3: Going to be as much of a struggle as the writing was.
00:01:23
Speaker 2: And I was going to tell you to feel free to read along or just tune me out and read it later. But there it ends with a bit of a cliffhanger, so you might want to listen. How do you eulogize a girl who never lived? She never crawled, walked, spoke, cried, We don't even have honest dates for the tombstone, since that clock starts at birth. By the time of her delivery, my daughter had left the building. Start with her full name, which she would have hated at times, because children.
00:01:56
Speaker 3: Tease Cecilia little lot.
00:02:00
Speaker 2: Cecilia is perfectly lovely, so of course my wife Ange came up with it, but that middle name would have dogged her. Have a look at her parents of their wide frames in my truly enormous head There's no way our little girl would.
00:02:13
Speaker 3: Have been little for long.
00:02:15
Speaker 2: That part of her name would have been a running joke, like a bouncer named tiny. The headstone isn't ready yet because those take time. Here is what will eventually be is inscribed in grantite for future generations to puzzle over.
00:02:30
Speaker 3: She danced an Irish jig and was a Peek a Boo champion. There are a couple of stories there.
00:02:38
Speaker 2: Many philosophers have insisted that every new human is a blank slate, a tabula rasa, but mothers have always known better. They know that each of their children has a distinct personality that they see manifest even in the womb. Of the three brothers, lot I was the one who was active at all hours. I rarely slept in euro or after, to my mother's gris consternation. My cousin Jenny recently had a healthy baby boy named Aiden in the womb. He hated intrusions on his space by any but his mother. When the doctor puts sensers on her belly to get readings, he targeted and successfully kicked them off. I see soccer in his future. And our little girl, Cecilia loved to dance. We discovered this when we were in a route to her fatal diagnosis at Swedish Hospital in Seattle. We made some stops along the way, including one in Annichordus. On a whim, we went to.
00:03:34
Speaker 3: A night of Irish music there.
00:03:35
Speaker 2: She was only sixteen weeks old, and yet Anne discovered she was kicking and more or less in time to the beat. She loved moving her long legs when she heard Irish music. She also grove to Latin music. And you know she was a true Washingtonian because she seemed to appreciate grunge. While bad eighties soft rock left her cold, she responded to other sounds as well. An She thinks she might have been shy.
00:04:03
Speaker 3: Or perhaps intently curious.
00:04:06
Speaker 2: When there were familiar voices around here, she would be active, and the presence of new voices she would pipe down and listen. She knew her father's voice when I read books out loud to and she kicked. We attended a conference and Cecilia was getting a little rowdy up in there, so I leaned into my wife's belly and said, knock it off, Cad.
00:04:28
Speaker 3: She surprised both of.
00:04:29
Speaker 2: Us by doing just that. But you probably want to know about the peekaboo right. Ultrasound is an amazing technology we see by way of sound waves and reconstructions on a screen. We could see evidence of a pregnancy before, but now we can see life in the womb.
00:04:47
Speaker 3: It's right there on the monitor. You can almost touch it.
00:04:52
Speaker 2: One of the things on that monitor that struck many viewers about Cecilia is what she did with her hands. She did intelligent things and playful things. She folded and steepled her fingers as if in thought or prayer, and she liked to put her hands in front of her eyes and take them away as he looked at her. She did this peak of a routine so often that it sometimes made it hard for us to get a good look at her. When she was still with us, we shared Cecilia's story with people. The great interest in support, in money and prayer and in so many other forms was surprising. Here you have this little girl who would not lived her much longer. She would never grow up and make her mark on the world. She might not even see daylight. But people wanted to know about her. They wanted to help in any way that they could, as you'll see from the children's books on the table to be donated to the library in her name. They wanted to commemorate her. Like so many other things about this pregnancy, Cecilia's in surprised me.
00:05:58
Speaker 3: I had assumed that she faded away, But like.
00:06:02
Speaker 2: Philosophers, we writers imagine, and mothers know better, Ange tells me it was a bang, not a whimper. As so many things failed her, Cecilia gathered up all of her strength and kicked really hard in protest one last time. It was the internal equivalent of that one left to mark, and after that she was gone. Right now, the news of her ending fills me with great, unimaginable sorrow, but I hope that will eventually give way to fatherly pride. Of course, no doubter of ours would ever go quietly into that good night.
00:06:49
Speaker 3: She was fierce and we loved her fiercely, and that's all we could do.
00:06:55
Speaker 4: Thank you for coming, and thank you Jeremy for sharing that his eulogy to his daughter Cecilia, and thanks to the Federalist dot com for providing it. Jeremy Lot's story Cecilia's story here on Our American Stories, Lee Habib here again. Our American Stories tries to tell the stories of America's past and present to Americans, and we want to hear your stories too.
00:07:40
Speaker 1: There's some of our favorites. Send them to us. Go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and click the your stories tabed again, please go to Alamerican Stories dot com and click the your Stories tab
Speaker 1: This is Lee h Habibe, and this is our American Stories, and it's time for our Final Thoughts series, where we bring you the final thoughts of folks who are dying and tributes to loved ones who've passed. A eulogy, a poem, anything and everything that stirs the soul. This week's Final Thoughts feature came to us from the terrific website the Federalist dot com, where a father named Jeremy Lott shared his eulogy to his daughter Cecilia, who passed away in a stillborn birth. Jeremy recorded his eulogy as he delivered it at the funeral, and he graciously shared it with us. All here's Jeremy.
00:01:13
Speaker 2: I was going to say that the text of this eulogy is included in your booklets, because its delivery is probably.
00:01:20
Speaker 3: Going to be as much of a struggle as the writing was.
00:01:23
Speaker 2: And I was going to tell you to feel free to read along or just tune me out and read it later. But there it ends with a bit of a cliffhanger, so you might want to listen. How do you eulogize a girl who never lived? She never crawled, walked, spoke, cried, We don't even have honest dates for the tombstone, since that clock starts at birth. By the time of her delivery, my daughter had left the building. Start with her full name, which she would have hated at times, because children.
00:01:56
Speaker 3: Tease Cecilia little lot.
00:02:00
Speaker 2: Cecilia is perfectly lovely, so of course my wife Ange came up with it, but that middle name would have dogged her. Have a look at her parents of their wide frames in my truly enormous head There's no way our little girl would.
00:02:13
Speaker 3: Have been little for long.
00:02:15
Speaker 2: That part of her name would have been a running joke, like a bouncer named tiny. The headstone isn't ready yet because those take time. Here is what will eventually be is inscribed in grantite for future generations to puzzle over.
00:02:30
Speaker 3: She danced an Irish jig and was a Peek a Boo champion. There are a couple of stories there.
00:02:38
Speaker 2: Many philosophers have insisted that every new human is a blank slate, a tabula rasa, but mothers have always known better. They know that each of their children has a distinct personality that they see manifest even in the womb. Of the three brothers, lot I was the one who was active at all hours. I rarely slept in euro or after, to my mother's gris consternation. My cousin Jenny recently had a healthy baby boy named Aiden in the womb. He hated intrusions on his space by any but his mother. When the doctor puts sensers on her belly to get readings, he targeted and successfully kicked them off. I see soccer in his future. And our little girl, Cecilia loved to dance. We discovered this when we were in a route to her fatal diagnosis at Swedish Hospital in Seattle. We made some stops along the way, including one in Annichordus. On a whim, we went to.
00:03:34
Speaker 3: A night of Irish music there.
00:03:35
Speaker 2: She was only sixteen weeks old, and yet Anne discovered she was kicking and more or less in time to the beat. She loved moving her long legs when she heard Irish music. She also grove to Latin music. And you know she was a true Washingtonian because she seemed to appreciate grunge. While bad eighties soft rock left her cold, she responded to other sounds as well. An She thinks she might have been shy.
00:04:03
Speaker 3: Or perhaps intently curious.
00:04:06
Speaker 2: When there were familiar voices around here, she would be active, and the presence of new voices she would pipe down and listen. She knew her father's voice when I read books out loud to and she kicked. We attended a conference and Cecilia was getting a little rowdy up in there, so I leaned into my wife's belly and said, knock it off, Cad.
00:04:28
Speaker 3: She surprised both of.
00:04:29
Speaker 2: Us by doing just that. But you probably want to know about the peekaboo right. Ultrasound is an amazing technology we see by way of sound waves and reconstructions on a screen. We could see evidence of a pregnancy before, but now we can see life in the womb.
00:04:47
Speaker 3: It's right there on the monitor. You can almost touch it.
00:04:52
Speaker 2: One of the things on that monitor that struck many viewers about Cecilia is what she did with her hands. She did intelligent things and playful things. She folded and steepled her fingers as if in thought or prayer, and she liked to put her hands in front of her eyes and take them away as he looked at her. She did this peak of a routine so often that it sometimes made it hard for us to get a good look at her. When she was still with us, we shared Cecilia's story with people. The great interest in support, in money and prayer and in so many other forms was surprising. Here you have this little girl who would not lived her much longer. She would never grow up and make her mark on the world. She might not even see daylight. But people wanted to know about her. They wanted to help in any way that they could, as you'll see from the children's books on the table to be donated to the library in her name. They wanted to commemorate her. Like so many other things about this pregnancy, Cecilia's in surprised me.
00:05:58
Speaker 3: I had assumed that she faded away, But like.
00:06:02
Speaker 2: Philosophers, we writers imagine, and mothers know better, Ange tells me it was a bang, not a whimper. As so many things failed her, Cecilia gathered up all of her strength and kicked really hard in protest one last time. It was the internal equivalent of that one left to mark, and after that she was gone. Right now, the news of her ending fills me with great, unimaginable sorrow, but I hope that will eventually give way to fatherly pride. Of course, no doubter of ours would ever go quietly into that good night.
00:06:49
Speaker 3: She was fierce and we loved her fiercely, and that's all we could do.
00:06:55
Speaker 4: Thank you for coming, and thank you Jeremy for sharing that his eulogy to his daughter Cecilia, and thanks to the Federalist dot com for providing it. Jeremy Lot's story Cecilia's story here on Our American Stories, Lee Habib here again. Our American Stories tries to tell the stories of America's past and present to Americans, and we want to hear your stories too.
00:07:40
Speaker 1: There's some of our favorites. Send them to us. Go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and click the your stories tabed again, please go to Alamerican Stories dot com and click the your Stories tab
