There is Joy and Pain in Every Season of Motherhood

A photo of the winter sky — taken by my daughter from her bedroom window about six weeks before she died

The season of my daughter’s death is winter. It is, in fact, the darkest part of winter. Four years ago, Ana’s oncologist told us she was terminal. That was sometime in the summer of 2016. By January of 2017, it became apparent that she would not live to reach her 16th birthday in May. As the weeks grew colder, the weather harsher, and the landscape increasingly grey, she withered and faded and ebbed.