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Part 2: You Are My Sunshine
I couldn’t speak. I just stared at my husband in the doorway.
He sat down on the edge of our bed. He didn’t come near me.
Then he told me everything.
While I was in the emergency room, the ICU doctor came to find him. He said Grace’s brain had stopped working. He said there was nothing more they could do.
He said one parent could come in. Right away.
Nick said, You were unconscious. They were giving you fluids. I couldn’t wait. I had to go.
He went in alone. He held her hand. He sang her song.
Then the doctor told him something else. Grace’s heart and kidneys were healthy. If the family agreed, she could save other children.
Nick said he remembered the night two years ago. A news story about a little boy who received a heart. I said, I could never let them take pieces of my baby. Never.
He said, I knew if I asked you, you’d say no. And I knew she’d want to help someone. She gave her crayons away at preschool. She gave her lunch to a boy who forgot his.
So he signed.
Then he told me no one was allowed in. He said he couldn’t bear for me to know I wasn’t there at the end. And he couldn’t bear for me to know what he decided.
I was furious. I was broken. I was everything at once.
You had no right, I said. She was my daughter too.
I know, he whispered. I know.
He moved into the guest room that night.
The next morning, his mother Pamela called me. Nick must have told her.
She didn’t say hello. She said, Erin, please don’t make this worse.
She said what’s done is done. She said Nick was destroyed. She said I shouldn’t contact the donation network. She said it would only hurt me more.
She said, Let it stay buried. For everyone’s sake.
I kept my voice calm.
Pamela, I said, I just found out my husband was with our daughter when she passed, and I wasn’t. I’m not going to bury anything.
She said I was being cruel to her son. She hung up.
That afternoon, my phone rang again. It was Nurse Joy.
Her voice was shaking. She said she had been terrified I would report her for giving me the footage. She said she might lose her job.
She said, I just couldn’t stand that you thought she was alone.
Then she said something else.
The donation network called me today. They asked me to tell you something, if you were ready.
Grace’s heart went to a six-year-old boy.
His mother wrote you a letter. It’s waiting for you.
Part 3: Five Years
I didn’t open the donation network’s email right away. I sat in Grace’s room for a long time, holding her pink sweater. And I let myself count.
Five years.
Grace was born on a snowy Tuesday in January. She had a full head of dark hair and a voice like a fire alarm.
Five birthdays. Five Halloween costumes. She was a butterfly every single year. She refused to be anything else.
Every night, I sang her You Are My Sunshine. Two times through. If I only sang it once, she noticed.
Nine days in the hospital. Nine days of fever and tests and waiting.
Nineteen days since she was gone.
Then I counted what Nick carried.
Nineteen days of telling me she was alone at the end. Nineteen days of sleeping beside me with the truth inside him.
He arranged the funeral without me, because I couldn’t get out of bed. He picked the little white casket. He picked the butterflies on the program.
He did all of it while I fell apart. And he did it all with that secret.
I thought about why I said never, two years ago.
When I was a girl, my grandmother told me that when people pass, they need to be whole to get into heaven. I never questioned it. I never even thought about it.
I said never because I was afraid. Not because I had ever thought it through.
Then I counted something new.
Joy told me Grace’s gift saved three children. Her heart went to a six-year-old boy. Her kidneys went to two little girls, ages four and nine.
Three families who didn’t lose a child that week.
I sat on Grace’s bed and cried until there was nothing left.
On Saturday morning, the doorbell rang.
It was Pamela. She had a casserole dish and a stern face.
Part 4: My Mother-in-Law
I let Pamela into the kitchen. Nick was at the store.
She set down the casserole. She didn’t sit.
She said she had come to talk sense into me. She said I was destroying her son.
She said, He was the one in that room, Erin. He held her while she went. You don’t know what that did to him.
I didn’t answer.
She said I needed to forgive him and move on. She said a marriage can’t survive anger like this. Not after losing a child.
Then she said I shouldn’t open that letter. She said the family would want something. Money. Attention. Photos.
She said, You’ll be chasing your daughter in some stranger’s child for the rest of your life. That isn’t healing. That’s torture.
Then she said the thing she had come to say.
If you leave Nick over this, you’ll lose your husband too. You’ll have nothing left.
I felt that one land. It was meant to.
Because I was terrified of exactly that. Losing everyone.
I took a slow breath.
Pamela, I said quietly, I’m not leaving Nick.
She looked surprised.
I’m angry, I said. I’m going to be angry for a long time. He took something from me that I can never get back. The chance to be there.
But I’m not leaving him.
And I am going to read that letter.
Pamela started to speak. I kept going, gently.
Grace gave away her crayons. She gave away her lunch. She would have given away her heart if anyone had asked her.
I was the one who said no. Not her.
Pamela’s eyes filled with tears. She sat down at the kitchen table.
She said, I just don’t want you to hurt more.
I know, I said. But I’m already hurting as much as I can. Maybe this is the only thing that could help.
Just then, the front door opened.
Nick walked in holding a thin envelope. He set the grocery bags down.
He said, This was in the mailbox. From the donation network.
They forwarded the letter.
He held it out to me. His hand was shaking.
She wants to meet us, he said. Leo’s mother. She wants us to meet her son.
Part 5: Her Heartbeat
I read the letter at the kitchen table. Nick sat beside me. Pamela sat across from us.
The letter was from a woman named Danielle. Her son Leo was born with a heart condition. By the time he was six, he was too weak to walk across his own bedroom.
She wrote, Every night, I sang to him and prayed for a miracle. I knew that for my prayer to be answered, another mother would have to lose everything.
I’m so sorry. I’m so grateful. I don’t know how to hold both of those at once.
Then she wrote, Leo rode his bike for the first time last Saturday.
I put my head down on the table and sobbed. Nick held me. I let him.
Pamela reached across the table and held my hand. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.
It took me two more months to be ready.
We met Danielle and Leo at a park, halfway between our towns, on a sunny Saturday in May.
Leo was small for six. He had freckles and a missing front tooth and a long scar down the middle of his chest.
He was wearing a T-shirt with a butterfly on it. Danielle said he picked it himself that morning.
Danielle hugged me for a long time. Neither of us could talk.
Then Leo walked over. He looked at me very seriously.
He said, Mom told me you’re Grace’s mommy.
I nodded.
He said, I’m taking good care of her heart. I eat my vegetables now.
Nick laughed and cried at the same time.
Danielle had brought a stethoscope. She said the hospital told her some families like to listen.
She asked if I wanted to.
I knelt down on the grass in front of Leo. My hands were shaking so badly that Nick had to help me put the earpieces in.
Leo held very still. I pressed the stethoscope to his little chest.
And there it was.
Steady. Strong. Sure.
My daughter’s heartbeat.
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t stop the tears.
Nick knelt beside me and put his hand on my back.
Then, very softly, I started to sing.
You are my sunshine. My only sunshine.
Leo didn’t know the words. But Nick did.
He sang the second time through with me.
Two times. Just like she always wanted.
