For 15 years, my granddaughter Audrey lit one white candle beside her birthday cake for the mother she never got to know.<\/p>\n
Her mother, Hannah, died giving birth.<\/p>\n
I raised Audrey myself, and every birthday I told stories about Hannah before Audrey blew out her candles.<\/p>\n
Then, just before Audrey\u2019s 15th birthday, I found a dusty box hidden in Hannah\u2019s old room.<\/p>\n
On the lid, in Hannah\u2019s handwriting, were two words:<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Audrey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inside was a letter.<\/p>\n
One line stopped me cold:<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Audrey ever asks whether I died because of her, the answer is no.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then Hannah wrote something else I wasn\u2019t prepared for.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease let her birthday belong to her.\u201d<\/p>\n
That evening, I showed Audrey the letter.<\/p>\n
She admitted she had never hated the white candle\u2014but every birthday felt like a memorial.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cry every year,\u201d she told me. \u201cHow am I supposed to make a birthday wish on the day you lost your daughter?\u201d<\/p>\n
Then she confessed that for years, her birthday wish had been the same:<\/p>\n
\u201cI wished Mom hadn\u2019t died.\u201d<\/p>\n
My heart broke.<\/p>\n
Audrey asked if we could light Hannah\u2019s candle on Hannah\u2019s birthday instead.<\/p>\n
Then she added something that made me laugh through my tears:<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate strawberry cake.\u201d<\/p>\n
We had served Hannah\u2019s favorite every year.<\/p>\n
Audrey wanted chocolate.<\/p>\n
So that night, 15 colorful candles covered a chocolate cake.<\/p>\n
The white candle stayed unlit.<\/p>\n
For once, Audrey\u2019s birthday belonged completely to her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For 15 years, my granddaughter Audrey lit one white candle beside her birthday cake for the mother she never got to know. Her mother, Hannah, died giving birth. I raised Audrey myself, and every birthday I told stories about Hannah before Audrey blew out her candles. Then, just before Audrey\u2019s 15th birthday, I found a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10028,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10026\/revisions\/10028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}