Sometimes, I close my eyes and I can see her staring back at me—or, the image forged in my mind of what she may have been. Bright blue eyes the color of waves breaking on a the white sandy beach of her skin, hair like chocolate shavings spiraling down upon her shoulders, and a bright, somewhat crooked grin reflecting the innocence of childhood. She is always running, careless through a field of unkempt grass, fingers grazing the emerald tips like an artist inspecting a sculpture. Her face, engrained with an uncanny measure of purity, only graces mine at the sound of her mother’s voice.

Her mother, my sister, although always absent in my reveries is a mirror image of the smiling young girl. Both have the same weightless smile, the same shine in their eyes, and the same effortless flow to their bouncing hair. Yet, in this field of dreams, they are so separate, so completely distant. They cannot meet and they cannot touch. The child runs and laughs, but she is not tangible. She dances and smiles, but she is not real—not in the realm of earthly reality. Not in this world or this time.

Perhaps, had the world been kinder, had the heavens decided upon a different fate, it would not be so. Perhaps, if something, somewhere, had aligned just a little differently, the child who plays so effortlessly in the visions of my imagination could have been touched, kissed, held, and caressed. Perhaps she could have embraced my hand, swung circles to the tune of “Ring-Around-the-Rosie”, and caught her younger brother and sister as they fell giggling to the floor. Perhaps… but it is not so.

As I dwell on the thought of visiting her grave, I reflect on the true injustice of it all. Her soul never had a chance to grace this world. Her mother never held her, never saw her, and never knew her. Her two and three year old siblings will never meet her. And although I may conjure visions of her in my mind, I will never know what she would have looked like, how she would have acted, what her voice could have sounded like in my ears.

Yet, for all these things that shall never be, all these moments we will never share, and things we shall never have, there is still one certainty. From the breath of her existence inside her mother’s womb and until the end of time, she, wherever she may play and dance in the green fields of heaven, will ALWAYS be loved.