Even though you wrote your posting to Wendy-Lee, I wanted to respond.  My 3 year-old twin daugher died 6/23/99 in the course of an adrenal crisis (salt-wasting CAH, her surviving twin has it), we just had the 2-year death anniversary, and to boot, the twins were born July 4th, so birthday right after death date.   I read your posting when your daughter died, and had emailed you, but that is probably a blur to you.   The story of your daughter's death is horrible, and so unfair.  The first 6 months were nearly impossible for me to make it through, I spent all of those months crying every day.  School supply shopping for the older children (2 months post death), I couldn't do it, I sat about 2 aisles over in a non-crowded aisle, sitting on the floor crying the whole time, creating a little lake in the store aisle ... I should have also been buying school supplies for Erica, she was to have started preschool 2 months to the day after her death.  I credit Roberta on this board for teaching me how to live again, her 2.5 year-old daughter Jessica died from an adrenal crisis Sept. 1997.   We emailed daily and talked on the phone at times, I listened to her and watched her, and looked to her as having survived losing a child, seeing how she was able to go on with her life, back to work, back to taking her other children to movies, out shopping, etc.  I saw that Roberta could do these things.  I also consulted with a grief counselor for the 6 months after Erica's death, and this grief counselor repeated over and over to me, "It's your choice, you can either spend the rest of your life wallowing in misery, OR you can learn to live with what has happened, and learn to go on and make the best of the rest of your life and find enjoyment in life."  It seemed like baby steps for the first 15 months after her death, little baby steps where I went from crying the whole 60 minutes of a grocery store trip, to only crying in certain aisles (when saw something Erica would have loved).  I could not take the 3 surviving children anywhere "fun" for about 10 months (the park, Chuckie Cheese, a movie), because nothing was fun without Erica, I didn't want to have fun.  Then I learned how to take the children to something fun (we started with going to the park).  I was talking to Roberta on the phone one night at about the 8 month mark, and she made me laugh.  That was the first time I laughed or even smiled since Erica had died.  I had vowed I would never laugh or smile again for the rest of my life.  It has all been baby steps, learning teeny bit by teeny bit how to live again, even if it's just to go one whole day without crying, the day you first smile or laugh, the day you first find enjoyment in taking your surviving child to the park, the day you can walk down a toy aisle and not cry... it's all little teeny baby steps in learning how to live again.  You have to create new memories, new things in life.  We took up some new hobbies at about the 16 month mark.  I just passed the 2 year mark, and I do smile and laugh a lot now.  My sense of humor came back, this helped so much.  I enjoy life now (the first 6 months I would just lay down somewhere and have to "rock myself" like a little kid, had to rock myself before bed, wishing I would just have a heart attack and die myself, it was so painful).  It is all baby steps, you recognize when you have been able to take a teeny step and be able to do something you couldn't do before.  It is teeny baby steps to learn how to live again.  What you have to do is learn how to live, to have to learn how to live with the deep gash that has cut out and removed a part of your heart, mind, and whole body.  I never thought I would survive losing Erica.  Sometimes I look at these horrible stretch marks on my thighs from having a twin pregnancy and being beached-whale sized, and it hurts (123 lbs to 205 lbs and born 5.5 weeks early).  If Erica was still here, I wouldn't care about these, because "the twins", those beautiful little girls, is the reason they are there.   Just remember the grief counselor's motto, "It is your choice, you can choose to live the rest of your life in misery, OR you can choose to make the best of what is left of your life, and to find enjoyment in life."