I still mother them….

This week, Gabriella’s death certificate came.

The words were clinical. Cold. Matter-of-fact.

“Toxic Effects of Cocaine, Fentanyl and Medetomidine.”

A single line.

One sentence that somehow managed to reopen a wound that had only just started to scar.

I thought I had already lived the worst day of my life on April 3rd. I was wrong.

There is something different about seeing it in writing. Black ink on white paper. No room for hope. No room for “maybe.” No room to pretend there might be another explanation.

Just the truth.

I’ve spent so many years telling people that addiction is a disease. I’ve stood in front of crowds. I’ve testified. I’ve trained hundreds to use Narcan. I’ve comforted parents who buried their children. I’ve helped families when they couldn’t even afford a cremation through Vincent’s fund.

I know all of that.

And yet…

When it’s your daughter, none of that knowledge protects your heart.

It just hurts.

People have asked me if getting the cause of death brought me closure.

It didn’t.

It brought questions.

Did she know?

Was she scared?

Did she think she was buying something else?

Could one different decision have changed everything?

Questions that have no answers.

This week I had to tell my grandchildren how their mom died.

There are conversations no grandparent should ever have to have.

I watched another layer of innocence disappear, and once again I wished I could carry this pain for everyone I love.

I can’t.

Tonight, I keep coming back to these words …

“Don’t miss me. I’m not gone. I just became everything we loved.”

I want to believe that.

So when I see a sunset, maybe that’s Gabriella.

Maybe Vincent is in the laughter that catches me off guard.

Maybe they’re both in the dragonflies that always seem to arrive exactly when I need them.

Maybe they’re in the ocean that now holds a piece of each of them.

Maybe love really doesn’t die.

Maybe it just changes where it lives.

The death certificate told me how Gabriella died.

It will never tell me how she lived.

It won’t tell you about her laugh.

It won’t tell you how fiercely she loved her children, and me and her brother.

It won’t tell you about the little girl who made me a mom or the woman I never stopped believing in.

It won’t tell you that she was so much more than the worst day of her life.

That’s my job.

As long as I have breath, I will make sure people know who Vincent was.

And I will make sure they know who Gabriella was.

Because addiction may have written the last sentence of their stories.

But it will never be the story I choose to tell.