The funeral home smelled of lilies and stagnation. It was a thick, cloying scent that coated the back of my throat, tasting like old water and performative grief. Two tiny white coffins sat at the front of the chapel, heartbreakingly small, each one barely three feet long.
My twin boys, Oliver and Lucas, had been alive just five days ago. They were seven months old. They had just started laughing—that wet, hiccupping baby laugh that makes the whole world stop spinning. Now, they were gone, victims of what the coroner had provisionally ruled Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, striking twice in one night. A statistical anomaly. A tragedy of astronomical odds.
I stood in the receiving line, my legs feeling like they were filled with lead, accepting condolences from people who wouldn’t look me in the eye. I could feel their judgment radiating off them like heat. How does a mother let two babies die? What did she do wrong?
