Her name is Magnolia Song.
Her father had always loved the name Maggie. Her mother Erin, a botanist, found the perfect origin for it, the magnolia tree, the oldest flowering species on earth, known for resilience and beauty. It felt exactly right for the little girl who arrived as the best surprise of their lives.
And what a girl she was. Maggie loved water in every form, puddles, bath time, the surf at the beach. She was mesmerized by the redwood trees that swayed above her backyard. She had dark curly hair and a smile that could pull the biggest belly laughs out of her oldest brother like nobody else could. She played a delightful game of slowly moving a Lego toward her mouth while watching her mama out of the corner of her eye, just to see the reaction. And the week before she died, at just 15 months old, she walked herself an entire mile through the snow at Lake Tahoe, just a small, determined person moving through the world entirely on her own terms.
Maggie was 15 months old when she died suddenly and unexpectedly on February 21st of this year. She had been perfectly healthy. She was smiling over her shoulder at Erin at 3:30 in the afternoon. By 1:00 in the morning she was gone, from an intestinal volvulus that twisted so quickly and so tightly that even the doctor who fought to save her looked Erin in the eyes three months later and said, I can say with 100% certainty that we did everything possible. There was no way to save her.
On the evening of that first terrible day, the family gathered on the front porch, and a great horned owl landed on the telephone wire right in front of them. A bird Erin had never seen at that house before. It sat there for ten, fifteen minutes, hooing, looking right at them. They called the boys out. They all just listened.
Erin has not seen that owl again.
She is not sure what she believes about signs. She is a scientist by nature, and grief has cracked open questions in her she never expected to be asking. But she has come to a quiet conclusion about it: whether or not signs are real does not actually matter. If it comforts you, it is enough.
That spirit of open, honest questioning is at the heart of everything Erin shares in this conversation. Six months into the most devastating loss of her life, she is not pretending to have answers. But she has made choices. She decided very early that she was going to lean in. She was not going to push Maggie aside. She was not going to avoid the grief or dress it up or rush through it. She drew a distinction that has helped her enormously, between grief, which is natural and healthy and necessary, and suffering, which lives in the guilt and the unanswerable whys. She could not choose whether Maggie lived. But she could choose how she was going to grieve.
And she holds onto something she heard on this podcast in those first desperate weeks of searching for guidance.
It is the love that connects. Not the grief.
Maggie is still woven into the fabric of their daily life. The magnolia trees Erin planted in March are blooming. The boys still make her laugh. And the love is still the thread.
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