I Overheard My 18-Year-Old Daughter Talking to Her Dead Father — What I Discovered Broke Me

I buried my husband when our daughter, Susie, was only three months old.

He never saw her crawl. He never heard her laugh. He never held her hand on her first day of school. From the moment he died, it was just the two of us against the world. I had to learn strength because there was no other choice. I learned how to smile through exhaustion, how to stretch one paycheck into two, and how to answer questions like, “Where’s my dad?” without falling apart.