Yesterday was the two year anniversary of the worst day of our lives.

We think about Emmet every day. It’s impossible not to — there are constant reminders of him in our daily lives, not the least of which is his surviving identical twin, Finn — so it’s not as if any day, even two years later, is easy. But we’d be lying if we said certain days aren’t harder than others, and yesterday, Emmer’s “angelversary,” was one of those days.

But I didn’t start writing so I could talk about our grief (mainly because I don’t think I could do any justice to that topic after Shannon wrote so eloquently on it a year ago). No, I wanted to write something today because, two years later, I think recent life events have given us something of a coda to Emmet’s brief life here with us.

Because yesterday was also the due date for our fourth child.

Our “rainbow baby” actually joined our family back on July 5 via a planned C-section. But when we’d found out that the baby’s due date was the same date that Emmet had left us… well, that was jarring, to say the least. We eventually came to see it as another sign that Emmet would always be present with us, and when we found out (in the delivery room!) that this baby was a boy, we further commemorated that presence by naming him Grady Emmet O’Brien.

“Baby Grady,” as his big brothers Dermot and Finn call him (never just Grady, for whatever reason), tipped the scales at 8 pounds, 8 ounces — exactly 7 pounds bigger than Finn and Emmet had been at birth. Even at 37 weeks and 2 days gestational age, however, Grady arrived with a bit of extra fluid in his lungs, and as he snuggled with his Mom in the recovery room just a couple of hours after being born, his constant grunting brought various NICU staff by, until finally the neonatologist who had been in the delivery room with Emmet and Finn, and who had eventually overseen Finn’s discharge 122 days later, almost sheepishly informed us that the fact that the grunting hadn’t stopped after a couple of hours meant that Grady would have to head down to the NICU for monitoring.

What might have been a devastating situation for many people wound up being, in some ways, oddly comforting for us. Grady spent about 54 hours in the NICU (most of that time on an IV, and a little over 24 hours of that time on CPAP) before rejoining his Mom down on the recovery floor. During that time, Grady was lucky enough to be watched over by both of Finn’s “primes” (primary nurses), the nurse who helped us to baptize Emmet, and plenty of Finn’s old doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, respiratory therapists, social workers and other support staff.

Grady’s stay also gave Finn the opportunity to take a victory lap through his old stomping grounds. Exactly 1 year, 7 months and 14 days after we carried Finn out of the NICU in his car seat, he came running back in wearing his “Big Brother” shirt (before immediately pointing at his new brother and yelling “Poopy butt!”). Seeing Finn back in that NICU was a poignant reminder of just how far he’s come.

Perhaps even more importantly, though, it dawned on us that Grady’s NICU stay gave him the chance to spend time in the place where his big brother Emmet had lived and died. It’s a weird quirk of fate, but as we took our very first family picture with Grady — including the “Emmet bear” Molly Bear decked out in a “Big Brother” shirt that matched Dermot’s and Finn’s — it really did feel like there was no more fitting place for that picture to have taken place.

Grady was the first one of our kids to come home with us when we left the hospital, and he’s a healthy (and constantly hungry and sleepy and — yes, Finn — poopy) almost three week old. We think he’s going to be a big boy, and so despite the nearly two year head start, tiny Finn is going to have to start watching his back sooner rather than later.

And as for Finn: aside from his small stature putting him at a disadvantage in current and future brotherly battles, he is doing phenomenally well. Developmentally, Finn isn’t really behind the curve at all, and that’s without even giving him the benefit of the doubt of adjusting his age for his actual due date. Shannon is fond of saying that Finn is the only one who doesn’t know that he was a 25 weeker, and I swear that that’s right — he’s talking up a storm, playing imaginary baseball with whatever bat-like objects he can get his hands on in the house, and ordering the nearest adult to sit and read him whatever book he can get his hands on.

And the latter is exactly what he did when I went into his room to get him the morning of his birthday two days ago: he said “I read a couple books,” then proceeded to point up to his shelf to where the custom made The Story of my Twin: Emmet Michael O’Brien sat and said, “I read Emmet book.” And it was impossible for me not to tear up and hug him as we got to the end of that book:

Your twin I’ll always be

For I am you and you are me

So when you feel sad or just a bit blue

Take a moment and think of me

Look in the mirror and right on cue

I’ll be smiling back at you

We love you, Emmet, and all of us — Mom, Dad, Dermot, Finn and now Grady — miss you every day.