My sweet Maddy angel, 5 years ago...
Today is the day I woke up in a hospital bed on the pediatric unit and realized it wasn’t just a bad dream. Today is the day I went from fear to shock to horror to devastation to despair to hope to confusion to guilt to all of those at once to each one compartmentalized to each one all over again and again. Today is the day I sat with your dad and had horrific but legitimate conversations about whether to keep you living with virtually no hope of recovery or allow you to die naturally and spend the rest of our lives questioning that decision. Today is the day I did the hardest thing I’ll ever do in my life: told your little brother you wouldn’t be coming home and watched the world he knew for 9 years fall apart—an image that will forever be burned into my mind. Today is the day I had to look at your grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins filled with sorrow and watch them struggle with not knowing what to do or say. Today is the day I had to pick a funeral home. Today is the day I stood by that hospital bed and watched you take your last breaths. Today is the day my old life ended and a life I never thought possible began.
And here I am, 5 years later, continuing this lifelong journey through grief, with all its ups and downs, twists and turns, never ending but never forgetting, a journey driven by love. And this I promise you my angel: your legacy will not be that of pain. Your legacy will not be overshadowed by a moment of tragedy. Your death was the worst thing that has ever happened to me, but YOU, my precious daughter, are the best thing that ever happened to me.