Project Heal Capture Your Grief: Family

In an effort to ease my hurting heart this Fall, I am participating in Project Heal: Capture Your Grief . It's a photography/storytelling project to honor the babies we've lost.

Day 9: Family 

When my living daughter, now age 9, was in Kindergarten, she told me "I am going to draw a family portrait. We are all going to be in it." She said it so resolutely, then grabbed a dry-erase board and set to work. I left her to it, but was admittedly very curious as to how she would draw her sister.
We're all pretty easily recognizable in this portrait, I think. My husband is the only one with glasses, I am the charming creature with the short hair and Ella is the little smiling face with long hair...
For a moment, I thought she had left Riley out, but then I looked up top.
"Is that a butterfly?" I asked.
"No, Mom. It's a dragonfly." she replied. "I know I'm not the best at drawing dragonflies..."
I thought for a second, and asked her why she had chosen to draw a dragonfly instead of a little girl. Dragonflies had always been my Riley symbol, and I knew she knew that.
"Mom, do you remember that one day when we went to the cemetery and we brought her flowers? And the dragonflies were EVERYWHERE. She was so close then."
And there you have it. We're still a family. One of us just flies above.