Come and gone, but forever in our hearts.

It has been the longest week of my life. Every day feels like it stretches on forever. I have been very blessed to have an amazingly wonderful and abundant support system. Thank you for all of your comments, thoughts, prayers, voicemails and visits.

In this past week time has ceased to make sense; days and nights....minutes and hours.

Tomorrow will mark one week since my daughter entered this world. It will also mark the day she left. We prayed that she be big and strong. Her daddy talked to her in the nights before her birth and asked her to be big and strong...and she did as she was told. She entered this world at 3 pounds 3 ounces and was 18 inches long. That's big. According to Baby Center she should have weighed less than two and a half pounds (some of this weight was fluid on her abdomen, but not THAT much) and should have only been about 15 inches long. My mother suggested that maybe I was further along than we thought. I know this is not the case because she was weighed and measured several times between 20 and 24 weeks and she always measured very SMALL. In fact, based on measurements from back then, the doctors thought I was actually about a week LESS further along than we thought. She fought hard and she grew big and tried to be very strong in the last month.

I'm not sure what happened exactly in the end. We didn't speak to the doctors afterwards, and even if we had I don't know that I would have remembered it. Shortly before her passing, a doctor came in and said that she was not getting enough oxygen to her organs and that were about to give out and shut down. But when the nurse called my mother she told her that Maggie's heart has simply stopped beating. As of right now, it doesn't really matter to me what happened. All I know is she is gone. She is not here with me. I cannot go to the NICU to see her. My daughter is gone.

Grief is like the ocean -- it ebbs and flows and there is the occasional tidal wave that seemingly comes from no where.

I miss my daughter.

I miss the weight of her body in my hands. I miss the smell of her skin. I miss the feeling of my lips pressed against her forehead. Her perfect bow lips and her tiny monkey toes. I miss my daughter and I would do anything to have her back for only a minute. I would do anything to be able to look into her eyes and tell her that I love her.

I will never know what her eyes looked like. I will never see her smile...hear her laugh. I will never feel her tiny hand wrapped tightly around my finger. Never put a band-aid on a boo boo. Teach her to ride a bike. There will be no dress up. No tea parties. No ballet recitals. No hugs when her heart has been broken. No tears at her wedding.

I miss my daughter.

This is not the way it should be. Twenty-three year old women should not have to decide burial or cremation for their child. Babies are not supposed to die. Women with abusive boyfriends and prostitutes with drug problems have healthy babies. Why not me?

God has a plan. He knows what is best. He would never give me a burden I cannot bear. He would never give me too much. He would never leave me alone to deal with this. I know this. I know He is in control. But it doesn't make it hurt less.

I miss my daughter.

Many of you have asked about a service for her. The answer is -- I do not know. The funeral home called this morning to let us know that her cremation will be taking place on Wednesday. I wanted so badly to have her body donated to medicine...for some worldly greater good to come from this. All of the organizations said she was too young and too small. This hurt me deeply. They did not want my daughter. It was like she was picked last for kickball. Like she didn't get an invitation to her friend's birthday party. Like no one put any cards in her homemade shoebox card holder in her class on Valentine's Day. It made me want to hold her even tighter and never let go. I wanted her.