I found out today that a mama, who I really don’t know well, but who was instrumental in helping match us with our beautiful angel on Earth, lost one of her children recently. I don’t know the details, or the circumstances, only that she and I are now connected, as sisters-in-loss, mothers parenting children in Heaven, carrying a weight heavier than any burden a woman should ever need to bear.

The news came during the beginning of the same week, that three years ago, my sweet angel was diagnosed with his terminal illness and began fighting his five-month battle for his brief, beautiful, bountiful, three-year life.

My angel, my baby, my perfectly created soul, began his journey to peace right around this time three years ago. Three years it has been since he got sick. Three years is all the time I got to have him on this Earth.

How cruel, and how ironic, and how amazing this lovely life is, that I am about to celebrate the fourth birthday of my new beautiful angel on Earth in this same month I mourn the beginning of the loss of his brother. This perfect boy whose been mine for less than a year, but who belongs with me as much as his brother did, and who forces a strength and resilience in me that compares only to that in which his brother’s loss forced me to find.

These two boys, who stir a hurricane of emotion in this mama from minute to minute, a battle between grief and gratitude, and a hope for a future where positive memories coexist with positive reinforcement, have left me satisfied.

Satisfied with my story. Saddened by my fate, but thankful for my blessings. Grateful for my lessons, but yearning for understanding. And hopeful for the future. Because I see a bright boy with nothing but potential. And an angel just waiting to guide him toward it.