But we were worried about her development. At her first birthday we were still hopeful and hadn’t gotten to that deepest darkest place in our minds and hearts. That was the time we started to sense Havi having developmental delays that eventually led to her fatal Tay-Sachs diagnosis. We finally removed the last of the decorative stickers that Matt had put up when Havi was just about a year old. I hadn’t realized how painful it would be to physically remove them all. A sticker collage of memories and shattered hopes and dreams. I watched Matt stretch for the ones by the ceiling, then over to the large sticker of the spreading tree that hung above Havi’s crib, and on to the engaging chipmunk stuck just above her changing table. The night before, I had stood on my tippy-toes peeling dozens of sparkly multicolored polka dots off the wall in Havi’s bedroom. Courtesy Myra SackĪs I walked downstairs, I noticed an errant polka dot sticker stuck to the side of my sock. My firstborn child, Havi, was diagnosed with a fatal disease, Tay-Sachs. Then I bent down over my 39-week pregnant belly, lifted Havi’s blankets and walked slowly out of the room. Instead, Matt gently placed them on the floor and we embraced. I turned toward my husband with arms extended to take the blankets.

His voice brought me back to the couch where I sat - now filling the space where Havi’s crib once stood. “Can you bring these blankets downstairs, love?” my husband asked me after a while. Matt looked at the tag: “3T.” Wordlessly we acknowledged the obvious: Havi had never grown to size 3T.

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