It has been two long years since my daughter Grace, eleven at the time, passed away.
Everyone I’ve ever met told me the pain would eventually fade away. Not only it didn’t, but it has become even more intense. I simply accepted the fact that grief would always be part of who I am, because there is nothing I could do about it.
At the time Grace was living her final days, it was my husband Neil who took all the responsibility around her. He never let me seen her on life support. He claimed I shouldn’t remember her like that. Following her passing, it was him who took care of all the paperwork I had no strength to go through and arranged the funeral. He also decided on a closed casket, which meant I never saw my child again after he told me she was brain brain dead and off life support.
During those moment of pain and grief, when I felt like my entire world shattered into a million pieces, my brain was wrapped in fog and I wasn’t capable of making any decisions about anything, so I simply left everything to Neil.
We never had any other children. I told myself that I would never survive losing another child. Life has already taken so much from me.
Then, last Thursday something happened that made my world spin.
My landline rang, something that doesn’t happen often nowadays, and that jarring sound almost made me jump. Honestly, I almost didn’t answer the phone because I though it was an elderly relative, and I have no strength to engage in conversations with family who try to convince me I should move on and forget everything that happened.
From the other side of a line was Frank, the principal of the middle school Grace attended. “I’m sorry to bother you, but we have a young girl in our office who wants to call her mother,” he said.
My heart sank. “What girl? You have the wrong person,” I said quickly, even though my heart was already in my throat. “My daughter is deceased.”
There was a pause.
“She says her name is ‘Grace,’” Frank said, still hesitantly, “And she looks remarkably similar to the photo we still have in the student database.”
My heart was slamming against my ribs, and my voice was shaking, but I still said, “My daughter is deceased.”
“She’s very upset, please, just speak to her,” Frank said.
And then I heard the girl saying, “Mommy? Mommy, please come get me?”
The phone dropped from my hands to the floor. That voice…
At that moment, my husband entered the kitchen with the cup of coffee in his hands. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw my face and the phone on the floor.
“What happened? What’s wrong?”
