Julie's Third Letter to Ava Gray:
 
Kiddo, boy you are speaking to me. I am hearing, love, I am hearing. An Instagram post from the mom of a non-speaking autistic kiddo passed along this message from her kid, and I heard your voice and our story in it as I read;
 
“I WOULD LIKE OTHERS TO KNOW HOW INTENSELY I FEEL EVERYTHING ABOUT THEM. THERE’S NO HIDING FROM ME. I FEEL YOUR GUILT COVERED IN A SMILE, YOUR EXHAUSTION WRAPPED IN A HUG. I LOVE YOUR EMOTIONS AND EXPERIENCE THEM ALONGSIDE YOU. I NEED YOU TO RECOGNIZE AND ACKNOWLEDGE HOW YOU FEEL NO MATTER WHAT, NO MATTER HOW DREADFUL YOU MIGHT THINK THEY ARE. I’M HERE TO HELP YOU FEEL AND PROCESS THEM. WE RUN INTO TROUBLE WHEN YOU TRY TO FEEL SOMETHING OTHER, SOMETHING YOU DEEM MORE ACCEPTABLE. THEN IT’S UP TO THIS UNRULY BODY TO SHOW YOU THE ERROR IN YOUR WAYS. IT’S A PAINFUL PROCESS FOR ALL OF US.
 
FEEL WITHOUT GUILT. FEEL IN YOUR BODY.
 
IT’S ALL VALID. YOU’LL FEEL MORE ALIVE AS A RESULT.”
 
Avie, I am learning. Too slowly and a little too late, I sometimes lament, but then I remember that we are all right on time, and that your life and your leaving were also right on time, and I can’t berate myself for not knowing what I didn’t yet know. And yet I grieve, sweet girl, for the missed opportunities to talk lovingly to you about these things while your delicate little hands were still physically wrapped in mine. I am sorry. I know you know that. I hear your “of course, mama!” all the time. And yet there is a deep anguish at having you leave before I could hear your precious heart and thoughts and feelings. You deserved all the love and comfort I could give you, and but I was still in the beginning lessons of how to give you those things. I know you are not angry with me (although it would be okay if you were), but I feel the walls of my regret keeping me locked up and away from where you are – where love resides. I am fighting to come out into the light of wild love, my daughter, and it may take me a minute, but I will get there. Forgiving myself for not knowing how to love you better is the hardest task at hand right now. Forgiving myself for the ways I gave up on myself and lost hope for both of us. May my regret be alchemized into a compassion so deep and real that no darkness can touch it. I love you, and even now my love is trapped in a body that has limitations, but the flame in my heart loves the flame in yours with the fire of a thousand suns, and it will never falter or dim with any amount of time. I am calling out the real and truest me, Ava Gray. You are here and I sense your encouragement and excitement as I step forward and then step forward again. You are simply the best, love. You and your sissie. How did I ever get so lucky as to be your mother? It is my greatest joy. My love for you still gives my life structure and direction and passion – the things that you and Finn are about stir me to love this world in such specific ways. You are wrapped up in every new adventure I set out on. You two are my “why it matters” when my heart falters. The lessons you lived out with me have stuck, darling, and I am going into a sort of collage now to learn even more. Thank you is what I most want to say today. Thank you for coming and living a life that held so much hardship and yet for shining out so brightly with love that you transformed our thoughts about…everything. I will never stop crying and laughing and loving at the whisper of your name. You are gone from the specific bed you lived much of your life in, and now you are everywhere. I see you in the purple flowers along almost every roadside in Nashville. I hear you in the stories and in the silences. I love you!
 
                           Love, mama.

Julie's Second Letter to Ava Gray:
 
Avie Gravy,
 
Oh, but I miss you. Those delicate long fingers that would flutter gently to rest on my arm when I sat down next to you. That mischievous quick flicker of a grin that would pierce the heaviness and cause me to giggle out loud. Since you’ve been gone, you are everywhere, my love. The grief of losing you has been the deepest ocean swell that has carried me, already treading water, far away from the shallows and across some sea. I find myself washed up on a deserted beach: alone, except that I am not. The echo’s and reflections of you fill every mirror in my heart. The deepest ache I feel at you being gone offers me better company than the closest of friends. I hold it close to me, and the deep love that is for you burns away the cold of the void that your shape left when you went away. I am all a-grief, and yet the utter joy I feel at the privilege and honor of knowing and loving you this hard makes me feel like the luckiest person in the world to feel it. And yes, love, I know you didn’t leave me. I know you are still here, perhaps even looking over my shoulder as I type this. I feel your little hands in my memory and the softness of your little kisses are so real in my grief that I sometimes touch my cheek in response. You were always so loved, Ava Gray. Even now, my love for you keeps growing as I realize that you were even more precious and strong and beautiful than even my mama-heart could realize there in the trench. We went through such suffering, my love. You bound yourself up with me and felt my pain as well as your own. What a wildly powerful and courageous heart you have, my love. That you could hold in you all that pain: all that love. I only bore the tiniest percentage of your suffering, and yet it made me stagger and almost fall. I was so worried near the end that I did not have what it took to walk you home. I wandered out into fear and exhaustion, love. I missed out on moments in which I could have offered my presence as a comfort to you. Even now I feel your forgiving through the gentleness of your fingers fluttering over my arm. Love. Little Ava Gray. You are a warrior. I am only now realizing how powerful your life’s mission was, and still is. Wherever you are, I send you all the love and support that my heart can muster. I still want to partner with you. Your work is so important, love. It will continue. I will carry the part that is for the physical part of this world. I will listen for whispers and echoes of you. I will trust that you are there. I love you so much. Selah.

At Ava Gray's Celebration of Life, in place of a eulogy, I (her mom) read a letter for/to Ava Gray herself:

Avie Gravy, First off, I miss your sweet & sassy face. Secondly, I wanted to tell you what you probably already know: how grateful I am to you for how you changed my life. Your life was not easy, but you taught me, and those privileged enough to know you, some incredibly life-changing lessons. These lessons weren’t like formulas for life: they were more a living invitation to something deeper.
 
We talk about you a lot, Avie. (Like, a LOT) Your family, your nurses, your friends. And when we do, 2 words come up over and over.
 
The first word that comes up is compassion: you taught us to have a fierce compassion for ourselves and for each other. So many of us had spent our lives before you feeling like we had to earn our place in this world. We had to act right, think the right things, behave in the right way, and contribute enough to deserve the love and belonging we so deeply longed for. Well AG, you sure didn’t act right, or behave, or contribute to our economy, but you JUST BEING YOU in our presence changed our whole world. You showed us that each of us are so deeply loved and precious, not because of what we can do, but just because of who we are. It is our inherent right to be loved and to belong to ourselves and to one another. I know that now, because of you.
 
The second word that keeps coming up is boundaries: you taught so many of us what good strong boundaries look like, and how to stand up for ourselves and each other unapologetically. Even though you couldn’t speak, you conveyed your opinions so strongly, and you persisted even when it took us a minute to figure out what you wanted or needed. If somebody got all up in your personal space, you would let them know that it was time to back it up. You had so many ways of talking to us. My favorite was when you would pull my arm in lovingly only to shove me in the direction of the toy you wanted me to go fetch for you. You were (also) so physically strong, Avie, as anyone who tried to take your blood pressure or put a pulse-ox on your toe can attest to. I remember laughing out loud so many times as I would try to pry your beloved hairdryer from your hands (but only because one of your blankets was starting to smoke), and I would completely fail. It took all of my wrestling skills to keep you alive at times. You were strong in spirit, too, love. A force of nature. 
 
There is one more thing that you invited us into, and that was a deep joy: the kind that can sit right up next to harsh and painful things without flickering. You brought such joy: you made us laugh so hard. (You are still making us laugh). You were an absolute stinker, which why one of your nicknames is “Stinker-Bell.” You could steal a watch or an iPhone or a stethoscope like nobody’s business. You would so often fake sleep till I stepped out of the room to make you some food or make a call, and then like lightning you would slide out of your bed and army crawl over to the kitty litter to play in it, or beeline for a floor vent and try to crawl down it. True to form, the last night we had with you, you waited for all of us to leave the room before you slipped away to your next big adventure.
 
I love you with my whole heart, Ava Gray. Thank you for being you, and for changing my whole life into something I now love. See you soon, kiddo!