I buried one of my twin daughters three years ago and spent every single day wrapping myself around that deep and truly devastating loss. So when her sister’s teacher casually said, “Both of your girls are doing great” on the very first day of first grade, I literally stopped breathing.
I remember the fever more than anything else. Ava had been cranky for two days. On the third morning, her temperature hit 104 degrees, and she went limp in my arms. I knew with the bone-deep certainty that only mothers understand that this was something else entirely. The hospital lights were too bright. The beeping was constant. And the word meningitis arrived the way the worst words always do, quietly, almost carefully, like the doctor was trying to hand it to us gently. John held my hand so hard that my knuckles ached. Ava’s twin sister, Lily, sat in a waiting room chair with her shoes not quite reaching the floor, not fully understanding, and eating the crackers a nurse had given her. And then, four days later, Ava was gone.
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