When Mia first told me that her late mother had been visiting her at school, I dismissed it as a child’s way of coping with grief. But when she started coming home with chocolates I hadn’t packed and drawing pictures of her mother with uncanny accuracy, I realized something far beyond my understanding was happening.

It had been two years since Elizabeth passed, but her absence still haunted us. Every so often, I’d catch myself expecting to see her walk through the door. Losing her to cancer was a blow that neither Mia nor I could fully recover from. Elizabeth was everything—a loving wife and an incredible mother. She shared a magical bond with Mia, the kind that made them inseparable. Without her, our home felt hollow.

Mia, my five-year-old daughter, had been adjusting to life without her mother in her own quiet way until one evening, she confidently announced, “Mommy visits me at school.” She held up a drawing of her mother. “She gave me chocolate today.”