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My daughter died giving birth, leaving me to raise her baby girl — 15 years later, I found a box she'd hidden before going to the hospital with my granddaughter's name written on it, and what was inside made my hands start shaking.

Fifteen years ago, I drove my 24-year-old daughter, Hannah, to the hospital believing it would be one of the happiest days of our lives.

She'd picked the name Audrey months earlier. She'd loved it since she was a teenager, so the second she learned she was having a girl, her mind was made up.

On the way to the hospital, Hannah looked at me nervously.

"Mom, what if I'm terrible at this?"

I squeezed her hand. "You're going to be a wonderful mother. And I'll be right there whenever you need me."

I had no idea those words would haunt me.

Something went terribly wrong during the delivery. Audrey survived, but Hannah didn't.

Holding my newborn granddaughter while being told my own daughter was gone nearly broke me. I loved Audrey immediately, but knowing Hannah would never get to hold her was unbearable.

Her boyfriend lasted barely a week.

"I can't do this," he told me. "Every time I look at Audrey, I see Hannah."

"She's your daughter. She needs you."

But he left anyway, and I raised Audrey alone while grieving my own child.

Those first years were hard, but Audrey gave me a reason to keep going. Somehow, that tiny baby grew into a sweet 15-year-old who reminded me more of Hannah every day.

Around Audrey's 15th birthday, I finally decided to go through the last of Hannah's things I'd never had the heart to touch.

That's when I found a small box hidden behind the bottom shelf of her old closet.

My heart started pounding the moment I saw Hannah's handwriting across the lid:

Hannah had hidden this box before she ever went to the hospital, and for 15 years, it had been sitting there without me knowing.

I sat down on the floor and opened it.

And when I saw what my daughter had left inside all those years ago, my hands started shaking. See less