1 Corinthians 15:53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

I had to look up words like macabre and morbid again to see if giving you small glimpses into Bella’s final moments with us fell into either of those categories. Macabre is defined by

1.gruesome and horrifying; ghastly; horrible, and 2.of, pertaining to, dealing with, or representing death, esp. its grimmer or uglier aspect.

Morbid shares some of those same connotations. These few pictures we’d like to share with you do represent her death, but as to whether they picture something grim, gruesome, ugly, or ghastly, we’ve concluded they certainly do not. Unlike the Gnostics of centuries past, or even those since who see the body as of lesser value than the soul, we believe firmly in the sanctity of the body, the intrinsic dignity it possesses by virtue of its origin in the mind and will of God. We cherish what is of flesh for obvious reasons: it was God who made this flesh; it was God who came in the flesh; and it will be God who resurrects our decayed flesh when He comes again. So whether this flesh is approaching death or has crossed over into death, that flesh is still of such import, magnificence, and beauty that to conceal it entirely from those of you who’ve come to love our Bella, though you have never seen her apart from her shadowy, in-utero images, seems a kind of deprivation—a diminishment of this particular body’s wondrousness.

They are some of the most intimate pictures we can imagine and that is why we feel it necessary to preface them with words of introduction and context. They include our holding her when the attempt to wean her from the ventilator had failed and we began to come to terms with the fact that she would not endure much longer; when we baptized her in the NICU; when our whole family said their earliest goodbyes to her; and when we had to say some of our final goodbyes. Her body was flawed and frail—as all our bodies are to a greater or lesser degree—but it was and is beautiful to us. We suspect that you will find her as beautiful as we have. Unlike other displays of the body that try to take a whimsical, and thus a de-contextualized look at death (remember the traveling exhibition of Bodyworks?), these images are as much in context as they can be. They conceal neither our sadness at her departure nor our thanksgiving at having had the time with her that we did. They reveal the frustration to which our bodies have been subjected and the majesty with which they’ve been endowed and still retain. They are a visual lament and celebration of this body.

There is a song we’d heard in concert last month from one folksinger we’ve mentioned before in these pages: David Wilcox. Hearing this song again, now having had to realize that Bella could not stay with us–well when you read and hear these lyrics, you may think, as we have, that they were crafted for Bella. In point of fact, David Wilcox wrote this song about hope. He just didn’t know it was about our Hope, our Isabella Hope.

The night I saw her dancing
She moved in liquid music
Like every song that moved us
Was the music of her soul

And waking up at sunrise
With the sunlight through her window
I pulled aside the curtain
Far away from home

When she danced
She knew the music
Like the waving of a wheat field
Gives the hidden wind away

So I’m so grateful for her beauty
And I knew she could not stay

Just the fragrance of her memory
In the satin and the velvet
Time split through a prism
And I knew that she was gone

But I found the note she’d written
If my heart could dare to trust her
Through the journey in the darkness
She’d be with me in the dawn

When she danced
The music knew her
Like the instruments were listening
To the motion that she played

I’m so grateful for her beauty
And I knew she could not stay

So I stepped out on the sidewalk
And I closed the door behind me
Following a fragrance
That was carried on the wind

And I knew I’d never reach her
‘Cause the starlight was the distance
But I knew that right beside me
Was where she’d always been

Now when we dance
She moves right through me
I know love is coming to me
From the promise that she gave

So I’m so grateful for her beauty
‘Cause it made my heart so brave