Tonje was on a business trip when she got “the call no mother wants to get.” It was her brother, and all he would say is that she had to come home. She hung up and called her husband, and he told her their 18-month old daughter had died unexpectedly overnight. 

She had to get home. She was in another part of the country, she was alone, and she had to get home. It was the only thing she could do, and it wasn’t as easy as just going home. She was hours away from the airport, and once there, she had to figure out how to get a flight. It was there when she was desperately trying to get home that she heard herself say “my daughter just died.”