It is true that I did not see what my daughter was carrying, and it is true that a mother should see such things, and I will not pretend the failure was not real.

But I have also come to understand why I did not see it, and the why is not indifference or negligence.

I did not see it because I was, during those months, drowning.

I had lost my husband, my sister, most of my family’s support, and then, catastrophically, my child, all in the span of a single terrible year, and I was using every resource I had simply to remain upright, to keep functioning, to get my four living children fed and to bed and through their days while I was falling apart inside.

There was, quite literally, nothing left over.