Nine years old, summer ‘11. Everyday, Emma spent hours on end pretending she was a superhero with her best friends. They laughed and walked to the pool down the street from her two-story red brick house.

One afternoon, her dad’s black Infinity pulled up next to the house. Emma hadn’t seen her dad all week because he always got home after she had gone to sleep. She ran and jumped into his welcoming arms. He continued inside and she resumed playing with her friends.

When her parents called her inside, she willingly did so. They all sat down as a family,  mom, dad, and her 5-year-old brother next to the coffee table. When her parents told her that they were separating, the air became thin and suddenly it became hard to breathe, hard to hold in the tears and the sobs.

She thought of all the Christmases and Thanksgivings, of all the movie nights and the days splashing in the pool.

At that moment she remembered the cold winter morning when she woke up to the smell of bacon all the way from downstairs.

At that moment she thought back to the snow days when they walked to the steep hill next to their neighborhood and had a blast sledding all day.

She went to the backyard and sat on an old, rusty swing that was part of the play set her brother had received for his birthday. She remembered watching from a window, her mom and dad laughing as they failed to put it together.

And she cried. Every night she cried herself to sleep and every day she knew that she would never be able to relive those precious moments.

Fourteen years old and lives with pain in her heart. Fourteen years old and hasn’t forgotten.