Two Weeks After Our Baby Died, My 8-Year-Old Whispered, “Mom, She Isn’t Gone—I Saw What Daddy Did at the Hospital”

I cried in the bathroom.

Then returned.

Grief and joy can occupy the same house.

One does not betray the other.

I sang happy birthday.

That did not mean I was “moving on.”

It meant Clara turned one.

PART 52 — THE BLUE PUPPY

Toby eventually moved the blue puppy out of Melanie’s crib.

“Can I keep him?”