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Born with a number of birth defects known as VATER Syndrome, Anna Loizeaux's chances for survival were uncertain. Each day was a gift and each moment was precious. Much of her brief life was spent in hospital nurseries and operating rooms, where medical technology and human intervention mustered all their resources to give her the chance for life that nature had not. In the end, they couldn't.
Anna was also born with a tremendous will to live - a "wild heart," her father calls it - and her months of life contained a lifetime. The bonds that grew between parents and child were sturdy and timeless. Most memorable of all were those days when Anna and her family could experience the luxury of the ordinary, a life at home. Their time together was lived with an intensity that matched Anna's own extraordinary tenacity.
Several weeks after Anna's death, William Loizeaux began a journal, a chronicle of dates and anniversaries, of memories and remembrances. Anna: A Daughter's Life is at once an effort to recreate her life and to measure his grief, to find reasons to go on while knowing the past would not let go its hold. Who can make sense of the death of a child? Where is the design to the enormity of that loss? Anna's death tore a hole in the fabric of her parents' lives, forcing them to confront what had seemed unimaginable.
In language everyone who has experienced loss will recognize and understand, Loizeaux gives much more than the mere consolation that time will pass and dim the pain. Anna truly transformed her parents' lives. She made them more attentive to miracles and rituals, great and small, and opened their eyes to the gifts and the cares of others who shared in Anna's life and death - from casual acquaintances to close friends and family. This stunningly beautiful record of a father's grief, begun out of isolation and helpless rage, becomes an act of celebration. In it, he finds, and offers to us, the courage and spirit that asked so much from so brief a life. Anna: A Daughter's Life is an unforgettable portrait of an unforgettable daughter.
