I remember Julian leaning over the railing of her hospital bed, his small face close to hers, whispering to her.

Making the kind of secret, solemn promises that children make when they do not yet understand the absolute permanence of death, when they still believe, somewhere, that a promise can reach across even that.

And I remember, to my lasting sorrow, that I had not listened closely to what my five-year-old son was promising his dying twin.

I could not.

I was too far gone in my own grief, too consumed by the unbearable knowledge of what was coming, to attend to the murmured words passing between my two children in that dim room.