I found myself sitting on a small patch of grass in the tiny cemetary a few blocks from my home. I often found myself there in that same spot after a particularly disturbing case... or any case for that matter. In fact, you could find me there on any given day, at any given moment. It was the most peaceful place in the world for me, even if the memories were my most painful, they were also my most treasured.

Sometimes I would find myself sitting there for no reason at all other than to sing to her. I would sing to her for hours and I would remember. Sitting there in the solice of that quite, peaceful place, I found that I could still remember everything about her.

I sang the song her father and I had sung to her nearly every single night from the day she was born, in the hospital, curled up in that sweet way babies always curl up and neatly fitting in the crook of my arm. And we continued to sing it for her until the very night she died, curled up comfortably on my chest, in the hospital, tiny and nearly as helpless as she'd been the day she was born. I'd found myself singing that song as she took her final breath of air and sailed off into the heavens.

I often found myself wondering who she would be now if she were still alive. She would have been almost 12 years old. She should have been in junior high. What would she have been like? Who would she have looked like? Would she have been a tomboy like I had been growing up? Would she have loved school as much as her father always had? Would she be as passionate about life as the two of us always were?

This night I wondered what I would be doing different. I certainly wouldn't be sitting here in front of this silent grave, singing to the wind. Would she have been playing with her friends and enjoying this beautiful summer evening, maybe having a slumber party or a campout in the backyard? Maybe the three of us, and possibly her brothers or sisters would all be out together, eating ice cream like we always did on Friday nights. Maybe she would be sitting on the front porch with her dad reading a good book when I arrived home from work and I would sink down with the two of them and we'd all settle peacefully into one another's arms... the way it had always been supposed to be.

Those were the thoughts that always crossed my mind and it pained me immensely to know I would never find out. I stared at the grave before me as I continued to sing her song...

I traced her name with my fingertips and thought of all the moments we'd shared together... the precious moments that made up the memories of her lifetime... the way our lives had changed since the day she died.

I wiped the tears from my eyes as I thought about the night she'd died and the months before. The pain she'd been through and the things she'd endured. Her beautiful sparkling eyes had all but lost their sparkle. Her golden brown skin had paled from the months of being stuck in the hospital. Her soft long brown curly hair had been replaced by a soft, silky bald head. But I'd loved those eyes and that skin and that head. And I would have given anything for more moments with her. Three years had not been long enough to get to know someone. Especially when I'd expected the rest of my life.

She'd died that night, looking beautiful and peaceful, in her own fashion. It was expected and unexpected and beautiful and painful and tragic... and I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Her birth, her life, her death... I had been there for every major milestone in her life, every precious moment. I wouldn't have traded those memories for the world.

We'd tried our best to make our marriage last and to survive together after she'd died... but we'd failed. Maybe even miserably. Like so many couples before us and so many couples to follow, we'd failed to find a way to live through our sadness as a couple. The only things we'd had in common anymore were that we had both lost our daughter, and that it hurt like hell.

Aside from that, the differences were glaring.

I'd turned to my faith, and he was mad at God. He'd wanted to pack up her things and turn her room back into a guest room and I'd wanted to keep the memories around as long as possible even if I never once opened that door in the months following her funeral. He'd thought we should return to work to take our minds off the pain... I'd wanted to curl up in a bed and stay there forever and if I drowned in the pain, so be it. 'Who can even think about work,' I'd thought at the time... 'my daughter is dead.'

It wasn't until after our divorce was finalized and I'd sought therapy to overcome my grief, that I finally realized that the main reason for our downfall was the lack on both our parts to allow each other to grieve the way we needed to. And I hated myself when I realized it, because I should have known... we should have known. The two of us had years worth of experience dealing with death in our jobs in law enforcement and we'd always learned, in every single class we'd taken that death affects every individual differently. That every single human being reacts in their own way and that this is perfectly acceptable. We, of all people, should have known.

And now here I was... singing to my daughter's grave... the daughter I would never see again. The daughter I missed a million little ways and a thousand big ones every single day of my life. And I knew that tonight, after I left this spot, I would go home to my 'now' family and I would tuck my beautiful, wonderful kids into bed, and I would kiss them each goodnight and I would sing them that same song and I would love them just as much, and sometimes I was scared that I loved them more, but I didn't. This was just a totally different love. A love that only someone who's lost a child can feel.

And after I tucked them in I would walk down the hall to my room and I would lay in bed beside my husband and I would think of how much I loved him too. And I would realize that the way I loved him was also totally different.

I stared at the name etched on the grave next to mine. Tyrone Davis.

Ty.

The two lives I'd lived in the past 15 years felt more like two entirely different lifetimes. In one I'd lost my perfect daughter and the man I'd loved for years and years. In the other I had the perfect children and a man I loved now and planned on loving for years to come.

So why couldn't I let go of him?

It was because deep inside, I still really loved him. Somehow when things settled and our grief had subsided, after years of heartache and misery, there we were... back again... the same two people we'd always been even though we had both been changed forever. And yet, somehow there inside both of us was a love that had never changed... but it was too late.

And I was both relieved and saddened to realize this.