Skip to content 
The blond girl hugged me first, awkward and sudden and completely sincere. The others followed until I stood there holding the kids I had once sent away, all of us crying for the same girl.
Benji barked once into the wind and ran back, tail going wild. I laughed. The first real laugh since the funeral.
“I blamed you because I couldn’t bear where else the pain belonged.”
I still miss my daughter in ways that language does not help. Benji settles outside my bedroom door at night. Her friends come by sometimes for dinner, to walk him, or just because grief feels lighter when shared by people.
They tell me stories. How Angie made them drive back to return a stray shopping cart because somebody had to. How she spent 40 minutes coaxing a scared kitten from under a car. How she talked about me all the time.
That last one still breaks me.
Angie did not get to come back. But she still found a way to leave something living, warm, and waiting at the door.
And some nights, when Benji rests his head on my lap and those kids laugh in my kitchen the way my daughter once did, it feels like my girl is still there… with me.
Grief feels lighter when shared by people.