Josie and I had been married for only a year when we started trying.

You see, we were both not as young as we used to be, and being 34 and 35, it was time to finally start a family before it was too late. But as hard as we tried, nothing was working. We saw doctors, went to clinics, followed the tricks and trades from couples who had experienced the same thing, but the outcome was the same. Josie couldn't get pregnant.

She was so determined, so ready for a family, that the news of her not being able to conceive just crushed her. I could see that she was trying to keep her emotions just below the surface, trying to glue back the cracks in her demeanor to prevent herself from crumbling into dust. But I was breaking too, and I knew that she couldn't take this burden all on her own. I told her that it was okay, that we will be okay. "We could adopt." I said, trying to council her.

"No." She shook her head, the whites of her blue eyes rimmed red. "I want to have a baby Daniel, our baby. A baby with my eyes and your curly brown hair; with my stubbornness and your enthusiasm. I want our baby to be a part of us."

I placed my hand on her knee, sliding my hand into her palm and weaving our fingers together. "I know," I gave them a squeeze. "I do too."

The weeks went by slowly, with my work at the office and hers at the elementary school. I think those kids made her even more determined than ever, seeing their bright faces and fantasizing her own child amongst the group. One day, Josie came home with a different air about her, marching straight toward me and slamming my body against the wall, her mouth crashing against mine with intensity.

I pulled back a moment later, off guard yet knew exactly what she was trying to do. I knew her like the back of my hand, but I still wanted to hear her reasons.

"What's this about Josie?" I said, giving her a quizzical look with an arch of the eyebrow.

She sighed, sliding her hands down from my shoulders to rest on my chest. "I can't give up just yet Daniel. I can't."

"Josie..."

"I know." She closes her eyes, her body quaking with desperation. "Please... Just one more time, and then we'll stop. We'll stop trying." She looked up at me then, her blue eyes shimmering and pleading. "One last try."

I looked at her long and hard. I didn't want her to face another heartbreak, but I didn't want to let her down either, and give up on us. So I kissed her back, directing her towards the bedroom and praying to God that he would answer our prayers and give us the gift we had always wanted.

He must have listened, because a couple weeks later Josie was pregnant.

We were ecstatic, and immediately began planning for our new child. Josie never stopped smiling, humming songs we had sung as children and picking out colors for the baby room.

We asked not to know the gender of our child until the big day came, so that made decorating the room even more difficult. But Josie loved a challenge, and finally she decided to paint the baby's room a warm cream color, but wanted the ceiling to be a dark blue.

When I asked her why, she just smiled and said, "I want our child to be sleeping under the stars."

In the early days of her pregnancy, I would find her in the baby's room, her blond hair up into a ponytail and her tank top and running shorts splattered with paint, as she painted the stars and galaxies on the ceiling. I tried to convince her to hire someone else to do it, concerned it will put to much strain on her, but as always she was stubborn and determined to do it herself. She did graduate college with an art major after all.

When she was finally done, she ran into the kitchen and grabbed my arm, pulling me up the stairs and into the baby's room, her hands covering my eyes. I could hear her giggling from behind me with excitement, which made me grin.

"Can I see now?" I asked.

"Wait a second." I felt a pressure on my lips, and I realized it was her own mouth on mine. She pulled back quickly before I could do anything more, and she giggled softly. "Okay, now look."

She removed her fingers, and I instantly gazed up.

Swirling galaxies painted in whites and yellows and purples covered her nigh sky, dotted with bright stars in various sizes. I felt Josie's arms slide around my torso, her head resting on my shoulder blade. "What do you think?"

I spun around, encircling my arms around her waist. "It's amazing."

She smiled softly at me. "You think so?"

I rested my forehead against hers. "Oh, I know."

As the months went on, the sliver of skin peeking between her shorts and her shirt began to widen, as her stomach swelled up with the growing child inside. But the days were no longer as sweet as we thought; Josie was struggling.

She would throw up constantly, her face pale and her skin clammy from the effort. I would comfort her anyway that I could, either bringing her soup as she rested in bed, taking the household responsibilities she would usually do, or just talk to her. We mostly had bad days, but the few good days would linger in our minds and make everything a little better.

Then, on January 6, she began to feel contractions.

We drove to the hospital, thinking it was a regular thing during the process that needed to be checked out. We were getting close to the due date now; less than two mouths away.

However, when we finally made it through the hospital doors, the pains started to get worse.

Nurses helped Josie onto a stretcher, and quickly pushed her down the hall. I was asking anyone in white scrubs what was wrong with her, but no one would give me an answer. They just pushed Josie through some double doors and then she was gone, leaving me alone in the waiting room.

So I waited.

A couple minutes later, a nurse ushered me into a room, where Josie was laying on a bed in a hospital gown, her face pale and she herself looking deprived of energy.

The doctor came in then, his face showing no emotion. He closed the door behind him, before he told us what was going on with Josie.

He said that Josie was going into labor, and that she was going to deliver today. Considering her difficulty conceiving, this was to be expected. But as he talked more and more, Josie looked even worse. She suddenly let out a cry of pain, and the nurses prepared her for delivery.

But she couldn't do it.

And so they rushed her off to the operating room, and immediately went into surgery.

I was beside her the whole time, holding her hand tightly and talking to her in soft tones as the doctors cut her open. She was so strong, barely showing any pain or hysteria. I would think that childbirth would bring that out of her, but it did the exact opposite.

Then we heard a cry.

It was the baby's first breath of air, and Josie and I let out a sigh of relief.

The baby was okay.

"It's a girl!"

The nurses were about to rush our child to the incubator room, since she was born premature, but Josie let out a protest.

"I want to see her." She said softly, but demandingly.

The nurse nodded, and handed our child to Josie in a soft pink blanket, allowing us the first look of our baby girl.

Josie gazed drowsily down at the squealing baby in her arms; a precious jewel made of flesh and blood. "She's heavenly." She breathed.

She smiled softly, before her eyes fluttered shut and the heart monitor beside her flat lined.

Nurses rushed to Josie's side, taking the baby out of her arms and putting an oxygen mask over Josie’s mouth. I didn't understand what was happening to her, and again the doctors and nurses didn't provide me the answers, but just escorted me out of the room and into the waiting room.

I waited two hours before the doctor found me, and told me that Josie had passed.

And I just fell to pieces. Josie was my other half, and I felt incomplete without her by my side. I didn't understand why He would take her away from me; we were both so ready to start a family, and now I would be living and raising our child without Josie in it.

I screamed and cried, falling to my knees and shaking violently. The nurses tried to calm me down, saying I was scaring the other patients in the room, but I didn't care; I just lost the love of my life.

Two days later I went to see our child, after I finally gained enough control of myself. As I looked at her in her incubator, all I could see was her mother; she was a spitting image of her.

I remembered back to what Josie had said when she saw her for the first time, and I smiled.

A nurse came to me then, asking what I had decided for the name of the baby.

"Heaven," I said, looking down at my little girl. "Her name is Heaven."

As Heaven grew older, she looked even more like her mother, with the same blue eyes and curly blonde hair, her curls coming from me.

She was stubborn and strong just like Josie too, and as Heaven turned four she needed that trait even more, when she began having trouble breathing.

The doctor told us that her heart wasn't maturing properly, and wasn't capable of keeping up with her body's supply of blood. In short, she needed a new heart. But being so young, it was difficult to find her a donor, and in turn she had to wait a year until she finally got one. Heaven wanted to do all the things the other little kids did, running around and playing, but she couldn't. She would always ask me why, and I would tell her that her body wasn't as strong and that she needed her energy for other things. Even though she was only four at the time, she was so wise for her age, and understood her illness and accepted it.

When she turned five, she finally found a donor for a new heart. She was so excited, bouncing in her seat as we drove to the hospital. The nurses dressed her in a hospital gown and sat her down on a stretcher, wheeling her gently towards the operating room. It was like I was seeing her mother all over again, and as if sensing my worry, Heaven grabbed my hand and smiled at me. "I'll be okay daddy. Stop looking so sad."

She was in surgery for four hours, and I waited nervously through all of them. The doctor finally came into the waiting room, and told me that everything went well, and that Heaven was in recovery.

I went into her room, and found her hooked up to a monitor and an oxygen tube in her nostrils, but nevertheless she was smiling. "Look daddy! I'm a mummy!" She showed me her bandage wrapped around her chest, and I couldn't help but laugh.

The next couple years Heaven thrived. She ran around with the other kids and laughed and played. The scar on her chest faded into a dull line, but nevertheless she was proud of it. We were so happy in those years, but when she turned eight she began having problems again.

She needed another transplant, and as I worried she just smiled at me, and told me the same thing she had said years ago. "I'll be okay daddy."

But into her third hour of surgery, Heaven didn't make it. She returned to the place she was named after, up there hopefully with her mother. I cried for weeks, unable to cope with the thought of not only loosing my little girl, but also the last living part of Josie as well. I guess Heaven was never meant for this world, and although I miss her terribly, I take comfort that she is in a better place now. Every now and then, I would lie down on the floor in Heaven's room and look up at the stars on her ceiling, wondering which one she was now. Hopefully I will join Heaven and Josie again one day, but for now, I know they would want me to enjoy life, because it is precious, and every moment is important.

They gave me a piece of heaven on earth, and even though it was only for a little while, I will treasure those moments the most.