PART 1: THE BOX MY DAUGHTER LEFT BEHIND
My name is Carolyn, and at seventy-one, I believed the most difficult years of my life were behind me. Then my daughter Darla and her husband boarded a plane for a work trip, leaving their four children with me for the weekend, and the aircraft crashed before they could return.
There were no survivors. Overnight, I became both grandmother and parent to Lily, nine, Ben, seven, Molly, five, and Rosie, who had just turned four. The older three understood that their parents were gone, but Rosie continued waiting for the front door to open and her mother to come home.
“Where’s Mommy?”
“She’s on a very long trip, sweetheart. But Grandma’s here. I’ll always be here.”
It was the kind of lie people tell when the truth is too painful for a child to absorb all at once. I hated saying it, but watching Rosie break hurt even more.
The first weeks were unbearable. Lily hardly ate, Ben started wetting the bed again, and all four children cried through the nights while I moved from room to room comforting them despite having no comfort left for myself.
