She isn't old enough to die. 

How do you, at 24, accept the news that your daughter won't live to see 2?

Her first day of school, first crush, wedding, children, all of those potentials are now no more. 

The scariest part about acknowledging death is accepting everything you'll miss. 

Looking into her eyes, seeing her sweet toothy grin, knowing that any morning you may wake up to her gone. 

But what's the alternative? Holding so tight to an impossibility that you waste the time you have left?

So you face death. 

You make the appointments.

And in between the hospital stays, surgeries and meetings with physicians, you also schedule mini vacations. 

Make memories in the little things.

Sitting in the sand next to the heart monitor.

Walking through the aquarium with a wheelchair that should be much too large for such a tiny body. 

Get concrete poured for no reason but to preserve everyone's handprints together for a last time. 

Day by day, you redefine "happiness" and "peace" and "contentment" to minute moments where the machines are quiet and everyone is still. 

Redefine "progress" and "success" to mean inch-stones instead of milestones. 

Redefine "family" to include the nurses, art therapists, and child life professionals who essentially live in your home, too. 

And at some point, one where I still cannot quite identify, you start redefining life. 

Today, she smiled at me while we watched her oxygen levels yoyo on the monitor.

She held my hand while we sat discussing hospice care.

She giggled as we ran through the rain to our front door for the first time in weeks. 

She is alive.