There is comfort to be found in things, when memories are so volatile, fleeting, unattainable. My daughter lived for eleven months, yet it sometimes feels like a dream, and left me wondering whether it really happened. I can’t remember her unique smell, the facial expressions that were hers only, the exact weight of her small body on mine. Sometimes it hurts too much to even try to remember.

In those times of doubt it helps to touch the things she touched. The things she wore, and the things she never get to wear. The things she played with, her toys and stuffed animals. The things we bought for her, the things we were given for her. Her mobile, her pillows and valance, her music box. Her beads of courage. Her hand and foot prints. She didn’t have that much, really. A few boxes. I guess she didn’t need much either. She had more love than things.

All those objects are real, as my daughter was. They are physical proof of her short life. I can hold on to them and they anchor me. My most precious possession on this earth is probably Soley’s stuffed pig. It wasn’t her oldest cuddly toy and I didn’t even buy it for her – her grandmother brought it to the hospital in March, when Soley was eight months. I think it came from one of her co-workers, someone I never met. Soley loved its softness. She buried her face into it and copiously dribbled on the pig’s ear. I used to sniff it afterward to find the smell, both sweet and acrid. That smell is long gone now.

The little pig was next to her when she died. She had been in a coma for the previous three weeks and by then, we couldn’t dress her anymore. They explained that clothes’ pleats could cause bedsores, so she was only wearing socks and a diaper that night. After she died, her nurse helped us wash her and put on her funeral dress. Then I took the brown socks from her feet, and put them on the pig’s.

It took me a year to be able to put that toy in the washing machine. Even now, it’s more grayish than pink, but i sleep with it every night. When i turn the light off I lay the cuddly toy besides me and sometimes I talk to it for a while. I always make sure it is comfortably installed. Once I went to my best friend’s to spent the night, and I forgot the pig at home. I didn’t say anything, but a wave of panic overwhelmed me. I wasn’t sure I would be able to sleep without it, but then I also thought I wouldn’t be able to survive my daughter. I slept fairly well, though I never forget it again.

Once a therapist I was seeing told me i should try to let go of the pig. But she was more insistent on Soley’s crib, that I had always keep in my bedroom. It’s like waiting for her to come back, the therapist said, and she won’t. Every time you look at it, it brings it all back. If you were not thinking about your daughter’s death at that precise moment, then seeing the crib will remind you of it. Best to store it somewhere – don’t you have a basement ? (spoiler alert : I kept the crib, and got rid of the therapist instead).

The thing was, I never really forgot she’s dead. And seeing the bed didn’t make me sad, unlike walking past the preschool on my way to work (can we get rid of that instead ?). After the therapy session I came home and cried. I remembered the day we drove to the nice suburb and bought the crib from this happy couple. They even gave us the embroidered valance with it. They had three kids, and they said they weren’t planning on a fourth, so they were done with the bed. Their kids were sitting at the table, eating porridge for dinner, and we thought that was cool. We thought hey, this could be us someday. I remembered that as soon as we came back, we put up the crib and set it up in our bedroom. I drew a dinosaur and a beluga whale to hang above the crib. We were so proud and excited to bring our baby girl home. Everything was just perfect.

We lost our apartment when we relocated our family across the country for Soley’s treatment. The crib was the only piece of furniture I could keep, a piece of happier time, but she never spent another night in it again after we moved. At first we thought she would need her bed when she’d leave the hospital in between treatments, but she was always too sick to be discharged. In the end she died on a hospital mattress, her dad and me lying on each side of her.

Fifteen months after burying our baby, we were ready to turn her bed into a piece of furniture to put her clothes and toys (the pig still sleeps with me). Soley’s dad sawed one of the crib rails and we bought a made to measure glass top. It was not much but it felt like healing, on our own terms. I love how it turned out, and I don’t think we will ever take it apart. It is so important to me that Soley keeps her dedicated place in the house, just like she has a dedicated place in our lives.

This is it. I can never come home anymore. I will never wake up in the morning and find my baby in her crib. But I can still find ways to mother her, and I can keep on going on – walking in her sunshine.

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Chloë Sóleyjarmóðir

Chloë is 27, and a high school teacher. But before anything else, she's Soley's mom. Soley was diagnosed at age 3 months with an aggressive kind of brain cancer called ATRT. She showed an amazing fight through months of hospital and chemotherapy, but treatment was ineffective and she died at 11 months. Soley is her only baby, and remains her whole world. You can read about her story on her blog, aboutholland.wordpress.com

Latest posts by Chloë Sóleyjarmóðir (see all)

• Love After Loss – Part II - February 10, 2017
• Love After Loss – Part I - February 8, 2017
• Sorry Not Sorry - January 23, 2017