Eight years after burying my only daughter, a sixteen-year-old girl entered my classroom with the same look as the teenager my daughter could have become. I told myself that the pain was playing a trick on me. Then I called the girl's parents and discovered something I had been hiding for years.
Eight years after my daughter’s death, I thought I had finally overcome my pain.
Then Lily walked into my classroom.
And for a terrible second, I thought my dead daughter had grown up without me.
***
Maggie was eight when she woke up with a fever and said she felt her legs “too heavy.”
Paul and I took her straight to the Diani hospital.
And for a terrible second, I thought my dead daughter had grown up without me.
For twelve days, the doctors did all possible tests, but none led to any.
On the 12th day, Maggie passed away.
There was never a clear explanation. On their death certificate, words that sounded official were used, but they did not tell me why my little girl had passed away.
I hated the doctors for not knowing.
On the 12th day, Maggie passed away.
I hated myself for believing them when they said they still had options.
Above all, I hated people who told me that Maggie was “in a better place,” because I knew exactly where her best place had been.
At home. With us.
Paul and I never had another child.
Most of all, I hated people who told me Maggie was “in a better place.”
Two years after Maggie's death, Paul asked me if I had ever thought of trying again.
“I can’t,” I said.
He nodded. “Then we won’t.”
So we became a family of two. It was not the life we had planned, but in the end it became a life.
It was eight years.
So we became a family of two.
I stopped crying every day. Then every week. Finally, I was able to pronounce Maggie’s name without feeling my throat closing.
It was around that time that I started teaching English at a local high school.
I liked teaching teenagers more than I expected.
My students were noisy, sarcastic, funny and often kinder than adults thought.
I started teaching English at a local high school.
They gave structure to my days.
Then, one Tuesday morning in October, someone knocked on my classroom door.
