On March 2nd 2009, my mom called to tell me my sister's house was on fire and she had been taken to the hospital. I called two of the nearest ones and neither had her admitted. I called and told my mom, who called back to say she was at Parma, and she was on her way there.

Mom didn't call back for a while. When she did I expected to hear she trundled out of the house and was fine but shaken up. Mom's first words were "Katie!!! . . .Manda died."

I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach.

At the time of her death Amanda Wesner was 29 years old and we had thought about five or so months pregnant. Manda and her husband Dewey had a son as well, who is six. When he was born and mom would watch him I used to pretend he was mine. Sometimes to this day I feel motherly toward him, but I never told anyone that.

Manda was sure she was pregnant with a girl. She knew. Like every woman just KNOWS. The baby was going to be named Abigail Rosemarie. Manda had picked that name out way back when she was pregnant with with my nephew. I teased her the last few weeks that Dewey didn't have any girls with him, after three boys with his ex and one with my sister.

March 3rd rolled around. We got a call from the Cuyahoga County coroner, telling us my sister had died from smoke inhalation, and the baby she had been carrying, not five months, but seven months at least (the length of the baby told him she was in her third trimester) was a baby girl. A news crew came by that day and Mom told them in tears that Amanda had taken the girl she always wanted with her.

The next few days rolled on agonizingly slowly. We bought clothes to wear to the visitation, I didn't wear any black because it was the part of funerals that Mandy had hated most. All the black. So I didn't wear any. Thursday we held a candlelight vigil outside of the house I had spent the night over so many times. I walked around the side to the the blackened walls. What had once been the dining room picture window. We lit the stupid little candles and they all kept blowing out.

Afterward we went to Dewey's family's restaurant and talked for a while, had some food. I got to see my baby second cousin for the first time in months. We went home to sleep and the next day we all got ready in our funeral gear, and went to Mallchok's.

We got there before anyone else and mom wanted to go right back to the chapel. The funeral director opened the doors and I saw her from the distance. And it was my Mandy. I was sobbing pretty much instantly. As we got closer she looked less and less like herself. Her skin was orange from the makeup, her forehead had a large burn on it that was caked over. One of her eyelids was disfigured and they had tried to fix it.

Laying over Amanda's left breast in a green Winniw the Pooh blanket that my mom had bought months ago, was my niece. In a little pink outfit my parents had picked out. She was tiny but perfect. Her hair was very thick, and dark. She looked sort of ashen. But I guess even makeup can't hide skin that's never seen the light of day. She looked like her mommy, and she was so beautiful. I slipped my finger in between hers, and it felt like any baby's, just cold.

I couldn't touch Mandy a lot. It wasn't really disgust or fear, I can't explain it. I touched her shoulder and just feeling her so lifeless broke a part of me. My mom kept shaking her and asking her to wake up. And I was inside of that chapel for six long hours, crying and hurting and staring at this person who had been such an integral part of my life for twenty years. I was closest to Mandy out of all my siblings. We talked on the phone and online and I spent the night at her house so I could babysit while she was at school.

I don't think I can grieve this and survive. It's been over a month. I can picture her in that casket perfectly. The shiny blue top and the blue bedding covering that of her that had been burnt. The lack of baby belly, and the baby half in her arms. My niece. The only niece I'll ever have.

The death certificate still hasn't been released because the investigation was turned over from the city to the state. They have some kind of evidence that doesn't support the fire being an accident. And not knowing how it happened and why she was so violently ripped from our lives has made this so much harder.

I've never felt agony like this. I don't know how to get past it.