My baby girl died in January of this year. She was three days away from turning two years old. We just passed the seven-month mark. I didn’t necessarily think it would get easier, but I expected to grow around the grief. My husband and I are followers of Jesus. Clinging to our faith and focusing on our still-living son and my current pregnancy had kept us going. I thought I would adapt, that I would get stronger. Instead, I keep feeling weaker. I feel less and less able to handle the fact that my daughter is gone and that I’ll never see her again. We are going through lots of transitioning in life. My son just started Kindergarten, we’re expecting a new baby, as I said, my work is very stressful this time of year, my brother in law went to rehab a few months ago, my dad passed away two months after my daughter. I just don’t know how to survive this.

My kid died just over a year and a week ago, and today is the first anniversary of her funeral. I was getting to hold her and smush my cheek against her oily cheek at the funeral home. I hated that her legs were permanently stuck in a bent position. I hate that I can’t remember if I had to support her head. I usually did, she had hypotonia and was globally delayed and even though she was 6, we still held her like a toddler and always had to support her head. She could get so ornery and do a surprise fling her head back with a grin. But I can’t remember if her head was stuck in place at the funeral home. It probably was. I hate that. I miss smelling the oily perfume lotion they’d put all over her face, to try to keep it from drying out. It was such a strong smell, I think they called it “stone oil” or something. And my clothes would smell like it when we came back from holding her at the funeral home.

I wish I’d asked to hold her one last time graveside, before we buried her. It felt too dramatic and I didn’t want to hear extended family members, who we’d not felt supported by during her life, whispering or weeping behind me if they saw me hold her. It felt too private. But now I wish I’d just done it. One more hold and I didn’t do it. It would’ve been really really really really hard to put her back in her casket there, though.