When Lila was in the NICU, there was a gold heart sticker that was on her chest that monitored her body temperature. I may have talked about it before. When she was transferred to the Children's Home, they took off all the monitors when she got there and one of the nurses handed me that golden heart sticker. Everything was moving so fast and I didn't have time to think of what to do with it, so I stuck it to the only thing that I had in my hand, the back of my phone case. After Lila passed, I kept the sticker on there. I had meant to put it somewhere that would last longer but I never took it off. Part of me didn't want to rip it but I think the real reason that I didn't take it off was because it was part of Lila for the days that she was here. So I kept it on.

There were times where it started to peel off and I stuck it back on or that I dropped my phone but the phone case just chipped. This weekend, the case met it's undoing. I dropped it again and it cracked in half. I was more upset that I broke my case than I was that my phone could have been busted. I had Lila's gold heart on my phone case for over a year. It was the only thing that it had with me every day since she passed away. I can't transfer it to a new case because it would probably get destroyed if I tried to take it off. So in a last ditch effort I bought a similar case with the hope that I could use half of the new case and keep the back that has Lila's heart sticker on it. We shall see if it works.

This is an example of how precious certain items are to us. We have only a limited amount of items to remember her with and we want them to last forever but have the understanding that not everything can.

- Mike