[Thank you, María José, for having sent me this narrative, which apparently is a letter to the editor of a daily paper, and which has touched me.]

“We are parents who were told by our gynaecologist that the child we were fondly expecting had a serious problem. Only after having being through this did we realise how hard it is to hear that your daughter has a brain injury and she will die soon after she is born, or maybe before. So many fond dreams smashed in a second! The same doctor explained to us that in such cases abortion is permitted up to twenty-two weeks of pregnancy. Even some relatives, friends, or companions at work dared give their opinions about what we should do with our daughter. We do not want to give advice to anybody, just to narrate our experience.

A year ago, the ultrasound scan after twenty weeks revealed our daughter had a brain lesion incompatible with life. We called her Mary, and we went ahead to live with her all the time her own nature would allow us. It was a hard gestation: nights without sleep, crying beyond control, and, chiefly, the day to day uncertainty, what will happen? Will she be born? How will she look? How long will she live, seconds, minutes, hours perhaps? But I must say that, at the same time, it was the happiest of my four gestations, the one I lived more intensely, because I was conscious that the longest time I was going to spend with her was while she was inside me. I enjoyed every kick, every moment we spent together, I sang to her, y even read stories to her before sleep.

Our daughter was born on 25 February and she lived hardly for two hours in our arms. She went surrounded by all those who loved her, dressed in the clothes that her two grannies had knitted, stitch by stitch, tear by tear, with the utmost love.

Remembering it I must assure you those two hours were the happiest and most intense hours in our lives. And even if it was very sad and very hard, we lived that painful and inevitable separation with the serenity and the pride we felt at having given her our love as to any of our children. Eight months have now gone by, and we have learned how to live without her, but her touching memory consoles us and will accompany us all our lives.”

I cry reading this.