We named them that winter day on the way to the maternity store, in the thrilling, disbelieving days of a first pregnancy, when your clothes are straining to fit and the next cup of hot chocolate can't come soon enough. Claire, I said; I'd always wanted to have a little girl named Claire. Daphne was named in conjunction with Claire; I'd filed her name in my mind from a fairly trite novel I read in high school about a beautiful, impulsive girl. Claire and Daphne. They seemed to go so well together.

We all have our war stories. Ours began with an innocent, almost imperceptible shift in the pregnancy at week 18; my cervix was hastily sewn up and I was laid down, almost completely flat, for as long as possible. The birth began just over 10 weeks later, and after the haze cleared, the news was quite good. The girls were considered relatively big and strong for their gestational age, and they progressed fairly well on schedule in the first few weeks, given the mercurial nature of prematurity.

Claire was almost always awake and emoting - she needed us right away. In contrast, Daphne curled up on her stomach and hid for those first several weeks. Hence, we spent a disproportionate amount of time falling deeply in love with Claire, while Daphne remained something of a mystery.

In her third week of life, Claire's condition plummeted overnight; an infection was later detected. Standing there that Wednesday afternoon in late March of 2001, as she was exposed to a circle of doctors out of the protective embrace of her isolette, I composed myself long enough to wait for my husband to arrive, running in from work. When he did, I pulled him through the echoing doors, down the white hallway, and into the back room of the lactation suite, where I cried on his lap as I have never cried before. I cried with the certainty of a mother who knows her child is dying and the uncertainty of whether I could continue without her. Since then, I rarely cry when it is appropriate or even instructive to do so. It is as if all of the tears left me that day.

The aftermath was exhausting. We were trying to mourn one child while nursing the other towards discharge, and that work began literally the morning after we said goodbye to Claire on her twentieth evening of life. Daphne remained in the hospital for five more seemingly endless, fragile weeks.

During this time, Maurice and I had heard the warnings from social workers about the enormous stresses of our situation and how they challenged even the strongest marriages. And yet we vowed simply to honor Claire by making the marriage all the stronger. Part of fulfilling that promise has been understanding that we have different ways, and different outlets, for expressing how we feel after losing Claire.

For me, one outlet has been writing. That July, I finally sent out announcements, which seemed a concrete and creative way for me to document our experience. Faced with the question of Daphne's birth weight, we settled on her weight from her due date, a respectable five and a half pounds. Tucked behind Daphne's announcement, in an equally large, separate envelope, lined in sage green, we enclosed a two-page tribute for Claire. When I went to have the announcements printed, the women at the store didn't know what to say. As one finally said, hesitantly, "We've never done a birth-death announcement." My dear friend Nancy wrote me that summer, echoing many, "I am tongue-tied."

And as a mother in a similar situation once wrote, "In my case, when people ask me how many children I have, I'm always torn as to my answer." I am sure you all have had similar, awkward, and numbing moments.

So today I want to talk with you, particularly to the newly bereaved, about identity. For me, I am almost five years into this identity of being a parent (now of three daughters) with another one always in mind.

One is, whoever we are, we are all joined together by our experiences. About a year after Claire died, I watched former President Bush speak about his daughter, Robin, who had died at age four of leukemia. This was a man with whom I'd felt little in common, but his tearful memories made me realize, with some measure of relief, I don't have to fully recover from this experience. I can have other kids and get older and it might get a little, even a lot, better, but this can be a legitimate part of me and that is just fine. And suddenly, I had learned something very significant from President Bush. I continue to learn from other parents who have lost their young.

Second, it's an identity of strength. One year in teaching, I had to write my different identities in boxes: teacher, wife, friend, daughter, athlete...and to these boxes I would now add, mother and survivor. Like any kind of survivor, we are all too aware of our scars, even if they are not readily visible. Yet we wear this quiet mantle with a deeper understanding of what is really meaningful. It is as if we are pulled to the brink, but retreat just in time from the loneliness and isolation of loss to rejoin the living ourselves.

Recently, I read Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking," which chronicles her experiences of losing a husband and adult child almost in lockstep. A different time in life for loss, yet many of her words ring true for me:

"Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it...Nor can we know ahead of the fact...[of] the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself."

And indeed, in grief, it can be a challenge to do the simplest things. For a long time after Claire died, while driving by the funeral home where we had her cremated, I was often halted by the stoplight at the corner. And each time, I would have to remind myself to breathe. Finally, I altered my driving route.

As I said earlier, Maurice and I mourn in our own ways, sometimes apart, which we share later in the day or week, or together, in the same moment. Two and a half years after Claire's death, we left Daphne and her newborn twin sisters (who had been carried by a surrogate) with a sitter and grandparents for five days, taking the week for ourselves and for Claire.

We taped her little dark blue vial of ashes shut, tucked them into our carry-on, boarded a plane, and two days later, hiked her down into the deepest canyon of Yellowstone National Park. We fished for the morning, poured and dispersed her ashes into the healthy, rushing river, and fished the rest of the day in her honor.

More than a year after her husband's death, with her daughter ill but still alive, Didion writes: "That I was only in the beginning process of mourning did not occur to me. Until now, I had been able only to grieve, not mourn. Grief was passive. Grief happened. Mourning, the act of dealing with grief, required attention."

That attention is hard to define. I think it is fair to say that mourning is a very complex, ongoing process, and one I am still figuring out aloud with those I love and trust. For Maurice and myself, some of the questions have included, How do we honor this child in everyday life? What ceremonies will become a part of our lives, and how will our children eventually join in for those memorial moments? Is it safe to celebrate and feel happy again, even if we are forever grounded by this life-altering event?

We need, as Didion writes, to spend time dwelling about how these losses have shaped our lives to date and how they might shape our future paths. Above all, I find it is a constantly evolving process. Claire is still in the mix in our household, and she will continue to be a presence. Of that I am certain.

In our case, as parents who have lost our young children, we are charged with honoring our "angels" by integrating them into our new lives, our new, more profound identities. It is about not letting the experience numb us beyond feeling and participating; indeed, it is about surviving. Surviving, and even flourishing.