Three years ago, I buried one of my twin daughters.

It’s the kind of sentence that still feels unreal when I say it out loud. Losing a child changes everything. The world keeps moving, people keep talking, life keeps demanding things from you—but inside, something stays frozen in that moment.

So when Lily’s teacher smiled warmly on her first day of first grade and casually said, “Both of your girls are doing great,” my heart nearly stopped.

For a second, I couldn’t breathe.

My husband John squeezed my hand gently, assuming the teacher had simply misspoken. But the words lingered in the air, unsettling and impossible.

Because three years earlier, my other daughter—Lily’s twin sister, Ava—had died.

Ava’s illness had come suddenly. One evening she complained of a headache and a fever. By morning she was too weak to stand. Doctors later confirmed it was meningitis.

The days that followed at the hospital felt like living inside a fog.

Bright fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Machines beeped in steady rhythms that became the soundtrack of those endless hours. Nurses spoke softly, as though volume alone could change the outcome.

John and I barely slept. We sat beside Ava’s bed, holding her small hand and whispering promises we hoped she could hear.

Four days after we brought her in, she was gone.

Even now, parts of that time feel missing from my memory, like pages torn from a book. I don’t remember the funeral clearly. I don’t remember the drive home. I only remember the quiet house afterward and Lily asking where her sister was.

I kept going because I had to. Because Lily still needed her mother.