I still don’t know which is worse.
I spent two hours building that video.
I pulled clips from infusion days and quiet home days and the strange in-between days when Lily smiled for us because she was trying to be brave.
There was Lily with a knit cap sliding off her bare head.
There was Leo sitting beside her in a plastic hospital chair, pressing a juice box into her hands.
There was a nurse laughing and asking why his hair was so long, and Leo answering, “Because promises grow slow.” There was a video from just three weeks earlier of Lily lying on the couch, running her fingers through one of his curls and whispering, “Don’t cut it yet.
It still helps.”
By the time I finished editing, I couldn’t see the screen through my tears.
Sunday evening, we drove to Brenda’s house under a pink-gray sky that made everything look softer than it was.
