365 days after Ava died I woke up to the sounds of birds chirping and trees rustling in the wind. The sun was barely starting to rise and everyone else, Travis, Logan, and my dad, were all still asleep. I burrowed deep into my sleeping bag letting the relief wash over me. I had made it. I had survived the worst year of my life, the first year after my baby died. I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep again.

By the time I opened my eyes again the sun was shining brightly over our campsite. A few more hours had passed and now everyone was starting to stir. I laid on my side, my left side, for the first time since the night before Ava was born, watching Logan as his eyes began to twitch awake and a smile spread across his face. I couldn’t believe how good I felt. We were only about 15 minutes from our house but it felt a lifetime away. I had dreaded this day for months and now that it was here I felt light and refreshed. I had gotten through the year, and I had a lifetime of happiness to look forward to. We slowly packed up camp and headed home. I sat in the backseat with Logan and as we rounded the familiar corner my cell phone began buzzing repeatedly alerting me to the fact that we were back in cell service, back in civilization and back to reality. My heart sank. The lightness I had felt just moments earlier suddenly felt too heavy in my chest. I could feel my anxiety building and my brain began running in circles trying to keep the panic in check. And while I wanted to turn the car around and go back to the safety of the forest, where my cell phone had no service and reality couldn’t find me, I also felt some strange relief in my grief. Because I didn’t want to feel good today. Because nothing about this day was ever going to feel ok. Because today would have been Ava’s first birthday.

Later that day, shortly after we had arrived home and unpacked the car, my dad helped Travis load Ava’s headstone in to my car. We had thought about that stone since the day she died. We spent countless hours debating the color, the size, the design, and the lettering. Every little detail had been considered, and decided, then reconsidered again. How do you express your love for the baby you never got a chance to know? And how do you do it tastefully? It didn’t feel right to give her an overly large stone but we didn’t want it to be too small either. At one point I took tape and outlined two different sized headstones on my kitchen floor. I stood with my feet at the base of each “stone” and tried to decide which one would look best for my daughter, and which one I would prefer to stand over for the rest of my life. It was one of the strangest things I had ever done. Travis designed the layout with the images and wording we had decided on, and left the final details up to me. I placed the order with the monument company and a few weeks later a box showed up on our doorstep. Travis brought it inside where it sat, next to the front door, for the weeks leading up to Ava’s birthday.

At the cemetery I laid out a picnic blanket for Logan and he got cozy playing with toys and watching movies on my phone while the rest of us prepared the ground. We dug and measured and dug and then replaced soil until the slanted ground was perfect, and together, we placed her stone at her grave. We pulled the weeds and refreshed the dirt that had sunken in over the last year, and planted the seed paper on which we had written notes to her at an infant loss event last fall. We carefully returned the rocks to where her visitors had placed them on her grave over the last year, and then each placed a small stone on her new headstone to mark our visit. We stood back admiring our work and felt a strange sense of accomplishment looking at the perfect and beautiful headstone we had created for our daughter. A beveled, pink, granite stone, bearing her name, her birthday, some artwork, and the words, Wherever you are…Our love will find you…a variation on the title of the book Travis had wanted to read at her funeral.

A few moments passed as we simply stood there, holding each other, in silence, in front of Ava’s grave, breathing slowly, taking in the air. And then I spoke. And even though it was just the three of us, plus Logan on his picnic blanket nearby, I felt nervous. Maybe it was because I didn’t speak at her funeral, or maybe it was just the enormity of the day, but I felt like I needed to say something, and it needed to be important. I couldn’t let this day pass, after the 364 days of agony leading up to it, without saying something meaningful. And so I started by saying, “I’d like to take a moment to be a little cheesy,” and my family obliged. And the words that had been running through my head started to pour out. In a trembling voice they went a little something like this:

“We have grieved intensely for 364 days. Today I want to celebrate Ava’s life and the way in which her few minutes of life forever changed mine. She has made me a better person, mother, nurse and friend, and motivates me daily to keep striving for more. She taught me about survival, empathy, and the intense power of love. Ava brought the most incredible support system and amazing new friends into my life. I am forever grateful for having the opportunity to be her mother and I will continue to carry her heart in mine forever.” 

And we hugged. And we cried. And we hugged again. And then we wiped away our tears and got back into the car and went home. And that night we celebrated Ava’s birthday. We ate cupcakes. And we sang Happy Birthday. And we laughed and we smiled together and we celebrated a first birthday like any other normal family. Except for the birthday candle, because Ava wasn’t there to blow it out. Instead, her memorial candle danced and flickered for 24 hours until the wax burned down and the flame went out, leaving a tiny trail of smoke rising to the sky.