After losing my husband and daughter, I never expected to become a mother again. Then a dying father asked me to marry him and raise his little girl, but the box she gave me one year after his death revealed something he had hidden from me all along.
Several years ago, I lost my husband and my little girl, Josie, in a car accident. Even now, there are parts of that day I can't bring myself to talk about.
What I can tell you is the thing that nagged at me.
Josie had a stuffed rabbit named Mr. Bunny, and he went EVERYWHERE with her.
After the accident, the hospital handed me a bag of her belongings. I went through it twice. No Mr. Bunny.
The thing that nagged at me.
I had lost my whole family, yet some nights I still lay awake wondering where that rabbit had gone. His absence became one more piece of her I couldn't bring home.
***
In the years that followed, I learned how to keep living without calling it moving on.
I never remarried. I never had another child. Eventually, I took a job as a housekeeper at a hospital.
The work was quiet and predictable, and for a long time, that was all I needed.
I had lost my whole family
Then one day I walked into Room 412 and met Daniel.
He was thin and gray around the edges, and he had terminal cancer.
He was also a widower. His wife had died giving birth to their daughter, Lily, who was six now and showed up every afternoon wearing a backpack bigger than her torso.
One morning I found Lily in the doorway with a hairbrush and a tangle on her head like a bird had moved in.
I walked into Room 412 and met Daniel.
Daniel sat propped up in bed, trying to help with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.
"Sorry, sweetheart," he told her. "Daddy's not much good at braids anymore."
"Give me that," I said, and I had the brush before I'd decided anything.
Lily held perfectly still, like I might change my mind. I braided her hair tight and neat. When I finished, she touched it with both hands.
"Give me that,"
"Too tight?"
"No. Just right." She smiled.
That was all it was. I had no idea how much it meant to her. I only knew she'd moved into my heart by lunchtime.
