05/24/2026
Dear Emma,
1,825 days without you. Today, we sit at home without you, alone in the stillness, looking at the empty space where your laughter used to live.
You were six when the world fractured. Five years have passed since then, which means you have now been gone almost as long as you were here. That is a cruel kind of math. Abby is eleven now. She is growing tall, losing her baby softness, and becoming the most beautiful girl. Every time I look at her, I am hit by a breathtaking wave of gratitude, immediately followed by a quiet, aching phantom pain. Because I know exactly what you would look like right now, too. Your dark brown eyes would match your long dark brown curls.
Abby carries you forward in ways that breaks my heart and heals it all at once. You are talked about and your name is said every day.
People told me back then that grief changes shape. I didn’t believe them. In those first couple of years, grief was a jagged piece of glass in my throat. It was the suffocating weight of hospital and St. Jude corridors, the beep of monitors, the deterioration of your fragile body. It was the anger of watching a vibrant, fierce little soul be stolen by an illness too big for her small body.
Five years out, the glass has worn down into something smoother. It doesn’t scream anymore- it hums, as a permanent background noise. I feel it when I pack 1 school lunch, back to school shopping for 1, birthday/Christmas shopping for 1, etc.
I miss you every time Abby has something to celebrate without her built in best friend beside her. This absence will forever feel this way.
Amidst the missing, a strange profound beauty can sometimes be found among the wreckage. Loving you for six years was worth the heartbreak that followed. Your absence hasn’t made the world darker, it has made me look closer to the light. I love fiercely. I hold Abby a little longer. I don’t take quiet mornings for granted.
You are not here, my sweet girl. But you are never, ever gone. 💜
