Orli

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/opinion/finding-beauty-after-death-loss.html

("I Am Trying to See What My Beautiful Daughter Saw")

There is a magnificence and dignity to this piece and to its earlier companion ("My Daughter's Future Was Taken from Her, and From Us"). A palpable cascading sadness and grief, resting side by side with a hunger and longing to remain attached to what was beautiful in Orli's universe and what remains even now that she has passed. Two universes colliding, a mother trying to reconcile impossibly irreconcilable differences.

I am thankful that Ms. Wildman has allowed us into her world. That she has given us permission to see and feel what such devastating loss looks like, how it manifests itself, how to try to manage it even as it cannot be managed.

There can be no greater pain than that of watching a child slip through one's grasp as you try desperately to hold on. But Orli will remain forever present through the words of her mother. And though she may no longer be able to protect her daughter, Ms. Wildman has been able to preserve everything wondrous about her.

It is a mother's last loving gift to her child.