Page 66 of Sex. Love. Marriage.

Please do something. Make it stop. Give her more time. Give us more time with her. Please, I’m begging you, God. Don’t take her.

Closing my eyes, I picture her sweet face before the cancer, her long blonde curls, the brightest blue eyes, and her chasing Oliver through our back field. It’s in that vision of her that I see her running wildly through the tall grass and into the sun where my little girl belongs, forever in the brightest light to match her beautiful soul.

Tears flow down my face to the point where I can’t breathe normally, but I keep reading. It’s torture, but I can’t stop because, for some reason, it makes me feel closer to my precious baby girl. It’s like I’m in that moment again and can picture every single detail from Noah’s breathing, Mara’s shallow strained ones, and the pain inside us knowing we were at the end.

Journal, it’s three in the morning, her birthday. Noah’s holding Mara with a cool rag pressed to her face. The front of his shirt is soaked in her sweat and his tears. I think it might be any moment now. The doctors came in to check on her and said it will be any time. Any second, her heart is going to stop. We have her on a morphine drip to help with the pain. She opened her eyes and looked at him a few minutes ago. She didn’t say anything, but she pulled at the mask. I knew it was helping her, but she was fighting against it. Noah removes it. Crawling into the bed with her, he takes all the blankets off her and he’s holding her in the bed, much like he did when she was born. Her head is on his chest, her tiny body skin and bones, the evidence that this awful disease has taken its toll on her. She’s soaked in sweat, her heart working so hard that it’s as if she’s running a marathon.

But in her daddy’s arms, she’s free of pain and held tight. A sob rolls through Noah’s chest as his hand raises, rubbing over her head as he presses his lips to her forehead. “It’s okay, baby girl. Daddy’s got you.”

So many memories take over. Noah holding her after she was born, how excited he was to have a daughter. Him teaching her to walk, riding on the tractor with him, and kissing scraped knees, and now this.

My final memory of this beautiful little girl will be her dying. Her losing her fight to this awful disease.

Noah wipes tears from his eyes. He’s sobbing now, his body shaking so badly he can barely hold her still. I move from my place beside the bed, to be with him. Noah wraps one of his arms around me, the other holding Mara to his chest.

Silence follows, Mara’s breaths fewer and fewer. I pray. I pray for a miracle or for God to take her. I can’t bear the thought of her suffering any longer. I remember nothing happening the way I thought it would.

I thought we’d have more time.

I look over at Noah, both of us so drenched in tears we can’t form thoughts, let alone say anything to one another. We should have been celebrating her birthday today, and here we are holding her, at the end of her battle. I press my lips to her temple. “You can go, baby girl.” I don’t know why I say that, maybe because I fear she’s holding on for us.

And then comes the last breath, the sigh, and the unbearable silence that follows. Her tiny heart stopped. I look at Noah, but he won’t look at me, his body rigid.

She’s gone.

She completed her puzzle, but mine’s forever missing a piece.

We hold her for an hour. After the pronouncement. After the bath. After everything, and the only thing worse than looking at your daughter dead is seeing the look of agony on your husband’s face and wanting him to comfort you and hold you and tell you everything is going to be fine, but knowing he’s physically incapable of it.

I feel alone and isolated in my anger and sadness, and I’m really not sure which emotion outweighs the other. I touch her hands, her face, kiss her, and even though I know she’s gone, I tell her one last time, “I love you.”

Noah doesn’t say anything. He stares at the floor, his entire body shaking.

Noah tugs on my hand. “I can’t be here,” he says, his words so broken, so lost.

And then we leave and walk out those doors without her, on the same day we brought her into the world seven short years ago. How do you walk away from your baby? Where does that strength come from, knowing you’re never going to see them the moment you leave?

When we do leave, Mara’s clothes and blankets in a bag, we sit in silence in the truck as the sun rises over the parking lot. The heat, much like this pain, is suffocating with no relief. I worry about her lying in the hospital. Is she too hot? Too cold?

I reach for his hand on the steering wheel, my cries the only sound aside from Noah’s heavy breathing.

“Should we go pick up the kids?” I ask, needing to hold our children. I don’t know how we’re going to tell them, but the need to be near them is so strong. Maybe if I see them, this won’t hurt so bad.

I think about Mara lying in the morgue, and it haunts me. The vision of her tiny body on a table, cold, alone…. I cry into my palms, unable to hold it back any longer.

Without saying anything, Noah starts the truck and pulls out of the hospital. I pray it’s all a nightmare, and I’ll wake up from it and these last six months haven’t actually happened. I pray that Noah won’t shut me out completely. I pray we’re going to make it because, at this point, I don’t think I’m going to make it through the next minute, let alone a lifetime without her.

I fear walking into our home and knowing she will never run around tormenting Oliver, her gentleness with Hazel and her treating Sevi like her own personal baby doll or hear her cackling laugh and bright blue eyes as she hides from us when it was bath time.

How can we go on?

I don’t want to. I want my daughter, damn it. I want her healthy!

I want to die.

I want the pain to be over.

That pain, it’s still there. My therapist told me weeks after Mara’s death as I sat in her office with a newborn, that time heals all wounds. I think she lied because this gaping hole in my chest isn’t going away. It’s still there, open, bleeding out with the life I thought I would have when I married Noah. And nothing I do closes it.

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