Let me introduce myself.

My name is Jessica, I am 34 years old, loving wife to Chris, high school English teacher, optimist, dog lover, daughter, sister, bookworm, occasional crafter, outdoor enthusiast… mother to a beautiful daughter… This would have been a relatively accurate description of me, but now we must add “bereaved mother” to the list. My story has been forever changed by my daughter, Lucy. Losing her has tossed us into a tempest of grief that will last a lifetime, and yet, we continue to search for hope and see Lucy’s light in all things. Here’s a piece of our story.

I met my husband Chris when I began teaching at the same teeny tiny rural school. I was the new English teacher, he was the Chemistry teacher with the steely blue eyes and man I felt instant chemistry with. We were friends for a time, and, skipping over some of the details, I ultimately realized that he is the love of my life. We married on June 20, 2015 in a small outdoor ceremony with our closest friends, loved ones, and of course, our dog Waggs, surrounding us. What we have is something so solid, and after both of us experiencing some not-so-stable relationships with others, we both know how valuable and beautiful our relationship is. We communicate well, we dislike all of the same things (I’ve been told hating all of the same things is actually one of the most important ingredients in a successful relationship), we don’t engage in nonsense drama together, we have incredible chemistry (there’s that chemistry word again!), and we love each other fully. Given that there is an age difference between us (Chris being the older one by 13 years or so, but who’s really counting?), and because my ‘biological clock’ is starting to tick, we couldn’t wait to get started trying to create a family right away. That November, five months after we were married, we had a positive pregnancy test, and couldn’t have been more excited. With both of us being teachers in the same small school, we had quite an ecstatic bunch of students who couldn’t wait to find out what “Baby O.” was going to be and look like… our families were absolutely thrilled, as our bundle of joy was going to be the first grandbaby on both sides. It was shaping up to be our dream come true. The school year ticked by rather quickly, and we soon panicked when summer break arrived, because during the school year, we’d saved all of the big house projects to get ready for our baby, Lucille Rose, who we fondly called ‘Lucy’. Suddenly, Chris was in a flurry to get two of the rooms in our house remodeled. I like to refer to my hubby as a ‘renaissance man’, as he truly is a jack of many trades, including teaching himself how to build and remodel things from scratch in our house. He likes to refer to himself as the “90 percenter” since he typically completes 90% of his projects before moving on to another. I was in a rush to make sure we had everything baby and then some for our girl’s arrival and began nesting like crazy. Even as I write this, I am smiling, thinking of the joy we felt as we prepped our home for Lucy. It was a beautiful time. The pregnancy was absolutely ‘textbook’, as they say, and Lucy grew beautifully, and we had zero complications. We felt prepared to be parents as that August 11 due date drew closer. We couldn’t wait to meet this little person that we wanted to shower all of our love upon. Then the unimaginable happened, and our world unraveled.

As I try my best to make sense of the loss of my beautiful little daughter, I struggle to find the answer to the one question that keeps rolling around inside of my mind: “WHY?”. There is no answer. There just isn’t.

I’d vaguely heard about placental abruption during pregnancy, but never really did my pregnancy ‘homework’ for the things that could go desperately wrong in the pregnancy book. Such a section does not exist. However, the worst happened to us, and it took our daughter from us. I’ve explained in greater detail what happened in the “Our Story” page.

We are now thrown head-on into the grief journey… of course we never thought it would happen to us, no one ever does. We were so close to everything we’ve always wanted together, so very close. Our arms ache to hold our little Lucille, but they are empty. Instead, we hold on to each other, trying our best to choose love over everything else, willing ourselves to decide that happiness will come again. It’s going to be a long, hard, grueling journey, likely one that is never going to end until we draw our last breaths. But journey the path we will, as there is no other choice.