The funny things that are triggers...

So Mattie has this seahorse that lights up and plays music that a friend actually gave to Julia when she was born but that Mattie claimed as her own and named Chloe. She has been falling to sleep with this seahorse every night since Julia was born. It is very soothing, actually. I snuggle with Mattie almost every night after Bob reads her books. I usually snuggle with her until she (and all to often I) falls asleep and therefore, I listen to Chloe. Chloe is running low on batteries and the songs it plays are now playing very slowly and at a lower pitch that they should. I found myself feeling a bit of anxiety tonight laying in bed with Mattie and listening to Chloe wondering if Chloe was going to hold out one more night or if the batteries would poop out in the middle of Mattie trying to get to sleep. This would most definitely disrupt her ability to fall asleep and delay the falling asleep process... most unfortunate. As I was thinking about this, it all of a sudden shot me back in time to the last hour Julia was alive. The batteries of this toy running out triggered an image in my head of Julia's heart. Just as the batteries no longer have the power to make Chloe function and sing like it should, the cardiomyopathty in Julia's heart made it so her heart did not have the power to pump and therefore pump blood to Julia's body. In the same way this evening as I was anticipating Chloe to poop out at any second, I sat there in the last hour of Julia's life holding her, wondering with every breath she took if it would be her last. It was weird to be transported like that. The differences are that Chloe's batteries held out long enough for Mattie to get to sleep. Julia's heart could hold out no longer. I can change the batteries in Chloe and make her strong again. I could not fix Julia's heart and nor could the doctors. It seems silly to be comparing my daughter's heart condition to a stuffed animal... but that's just where my mind went this evening.