A grieving mother from Vancouver in Canada has shared a birthday tribute to her daughter who is no longer here.
Melissa Carlton (@melissamaecarlton) posted a heartbreaking reel on Instagram marking what would have been her daughter Abigail’s 10th birthday.
“Yesterday, I should have had a 10-year-old running down the stairs in the morning, eager to open her presents,” the text overlay read.
“What would she have wanted? Would she have been into the same things? Or something else now? I can only guess,” Carlton wrote.
Carlton, 33, told Newsweek that Abigail’s birthday morning felt painfully quiet for the whole family.
“There was this aching sense that someone was missing—because she was,” the mom of four said. “I kept imagining what it would’ve looked like: her running downstairs with excitement as she always did, maybe still loving Mario or asking to play Minecraft with her siblings.
“Instead, it was a day full of silence and sorrow, trying to celebrate her while also surviving the grief,” Carlton said. “It’s strange to grieve both who she was and who she could have become.”
Carlton and her husband, Thomas, 35, lost their daughter very suddenly to a rare and aggressive form of sepsis. The mom said it came out of nowhere, since Abigail was a healthy 9-year-old running around with her friends the evening before.
In the early hours of the morning, Abigail had a stomach ache and consequently threw up. Her parents thought it was just another common stomach bug they had seen countless times in their four-children household.
“Within a few hours, she was gone,” Melissa said. The couple were told that Abigail’s sepsis can spread “like wildfire,” and even if she had been taken to the emergency room, it was unlikely that it would have been caught in time.
In the days and weeks after Abigail’s death, Melissa and the family were in complete shock.
“Gradually, as people heard, they began to show up,” she told Newsweek. “Friends, neighbors, members of our church community brought food, cleaned, hugged us, and just sat with us.”
Some family and friends set off immediately from where they lived and drove through the night to reach the family.
“It felt like our home became sacred ground—heavy with sorrow but also close to heaven and full of love,” Melissa said. “That truly helped carried us through those first impossible days.”
Abigail’s humor, joy and generosity left a mark on everyone who came across her. “She loved to share, even her birthday money—just days before she passed, she insisted on buying each of her siblings a toy,” Melissa said.
“That night, after giving her little sister a monkey that hugged around her neck, she came to me and said, ‘Mom, I’m so happy,’ with the biggest smile. I asked why, and she said, ‘Because she’s happy.’ That was Abigail. She found her joy in others’ joy.”
To honor Abigail’s memory on the anniversary of her passing, the family created a “Power-Up Hike,” a trail turned into a Super Mario-style adventure that she once loved.
Melissa and Thomas invited friends and family to join them. They placed 10 custom signs to encourage children to tell a joke, be kind to someone, or do a quiet act of service.
The parents set up a handmade Princess Peach castle at the summit, and children were invited to write notes to send to heaven.
“As we finished, a rainbow appeared—stretched right over our house and the skate park where she used to play,” Melissa said. “It was so sudden and vibrant, it felt like magic, like something out of a movie. I have no doubt it was a gift from her.”
Since her daughter’s death, Melissa has become an outspoken advocate for open conversation around child loss and grief, using her social-media account to share her journey to healing. Earlier this spring, she also held a grief meetup for bereaved parents and is currently taking the Grief Educator Certification with David Kessler.
“I believe grief is meant to be witnessed, not hidden,” Melissa said. “And I’ll continue to be a witness—for Abigail, and for every grieving parent who needs to know they’re not alone.”
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