In the middle of the chaos of getting ready for family pictures, my 6-year-old daughter suddenly stopped me in my tracks.
“Mommy, I want to get a picture with Parker and Abby.”
Her words caught me completely off guard. For six years, our family had always been a “party of three”—just me, my husband, and our daughter. This year, our family picture would be different, with the addition of one more, our rainbow baby. But the names she spoke—Parker and Abby—carried a depth that most people would never know.
What many don’t realize is that my daughter was originally a triplet. We had dreamed of a picture-perfect life: two identical girls and a boy, playing together, growing up as the closest of siblings. But that dream was shattered when I delivered our triplets at just 22 weeks. Our daughter survived, but her brother and sister, Parker and Abby, passed away within two months of birth. In those early days, all three of our children were present in our hearts and our routines. Friends and family made sure that Parker and Abby would always be remembered.
As the years have passed, their names are spoken less frequently. New friends may never know our bittersweet story, and sometimes I find myself quietly omitting their names when strangers ask about my children. There are days I don’t have the energy to explain, or to face that familiar look of sadness when others learn that two of my children died. Child loss is still a topic many shy away from, but for parents like me, the grief never truly disappears—it only changes shape over time. Parker and Abby are with me in every thought, every day. And now, I realize, my daughter carries them in her heart too.
Rushing out of the house, I assured her that Parker and Abby would absolutely be part of the pictures. When she was just 3, our photographer—who captured our family in a profoundly meaningful way—snapped a beautiful photo of our family with two subtle shadows representing our children in Heaven. That picture still hangs in our family room, a quiet reminder that their lives are never forgotten.
As we arrived, my daughter ran to our photographer, a fellow triplet mom, and exclaimed with pure excitement, “Can I get a picture with Parker and Abby?!?”
I looked at my friend, tears instantly forming in my eyes. There is no handbook for surviving the death of a child. As parents navigating child loss, we constantly try to find the balance between celebrating our survivor while grieving and remembering those we’ve lost. And yet, in that moment, watching my daughter laugh and shine in front of the camera, life felt whole. My daughter is a proud big sister to two children in Heaven, and I couldn’t be more proud to be their mom.
