“I don’t want them to have a mother like me,” my daughter said.
I sat in a heap, shoulders bent, my right side propped against the hospital bed.
The children were always on her mind when thought processes were not drugged by the mass on her brain stem, or the drip in her arm, and when for a spark of a moment she communicated.
Two-year-old Sofia danced circles around the sterile room. Hospital visits were part of her life, commonplace as macaroni and cheese for lunch. Dressed like a ballerina, she looked like a pink cloud that bounced with twirls, hops, and skips. Isabella, six-months, was swaddled in soft pink.
She lay, placed in the crook of my daughter’s arm. Her cherry mouth made little round puckers. Her button nose invited touch. She seemed perfect sweetness in miniature.
To watch my daughter’s physical puzzle pieces fail her and her body go rogue…
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