Two Years Later

Sometimes grief returns in ordinary moments — a van ride, a conversation about heaven, a Dairy Queen parking lot.

March 13, 2026

It has been more than two years since Michaela was born.

She entered the world in January of 2024, and by July of that same year we laid her to rest at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Marathon, near Beth Ann Berres. Beth was born at twenty-one weeks in 1983. Michaela in 2024. Forty years apart, yet resting near each other in the same family story.

For a long time after Michaela died, everything felt suspended. Grief has a way of slowing time, of making decisions feel impossible. You survive the moment, then the next day, then the next season.

But eventually life keeps moving forward.

Now it is March of 2026, and Steve and I have found ourselves talking about something we quietly avoided for a while — Michaela’s gravestone.

Designing a gravestone for your child is not something anyone prepares you for. You are supposed to be choosing cribs and baby clothes, not granite colors and engravings.

Today I was sitting in the van working through ideas. Matching Beth’s marker. Adding a small rosebud because the rose medal on Michaela’s rosary meant something to us.

As I worked through it, the tears came.

Not quietly. Not gracefully. Just the kind of tears that come when grief shows up again without warning.

After a while Steve looked over and asked,

“Why are you crying?”

I told him the truth.

“I’m working on Michaela’s stone and it’s just sad.”

He paused for a moment and then said something simple.

“You want to know why I’m not sad? Because I believe in heaven. I know she’s in heaven.”

I believe that too.

But my answer came out before I even had time to think about it.

“Maybe I feel jealous.”

Jealous that I don’t get to see her big gummy baby smiles like Myles.

Jealous that I don’t get to hear Marian sing Baby Shark to her.

Jealous that I won’t watch Matthew dream about motorized bikes while she watches her big brother.

All of those little ordinary moments of childhood were happening around us at that very moment in the van.

Life moving forward.

And Michaela not here to experience it.

As if grief needed a little extra irony, we pulled into a Dairy Queen parking lot in a small town that seemed to have everything except a gas station.

Dollar General.
Dairy Queen.
Super 8.
Sonic.
And parked in the lot… a hearse.

Life and death sitting in the same parking lot.

That is what grief often feels like.

Faith and sadness existing at the same time.

I believe Michaela is in heaven.

I also believe it is okay to miss the life we imagined with her here.

Both things can be true.

Two years later, we are choosing a stone that will mark her place in the world.

A small marker with her name:

Michaela Jade Berres.

And a tiny rosebud.

Because roses mattered to us when we said goodbye. The rosary Michaela was wrapped in carried a small rose medal, a quiet reminder of prayer and the love that surrounded her from the very beginning.

It feels fitting that the same symbol will now be etched into the stone that marks where she rests.

A rosebud.

Two years later, she is still shaping our story — a quiet reminder that heaven is not so far away when someone you love lives there.