“He loved her from the moment she was conceived,” Arias says of Fernández, who also picked her name, Penelope, after a Spanish song. “Everyone knew how excited he was to be a dad, he made sure of it.”
She wanted to make sure that he included Fernández in the birthing process. “I kept a piece of his clothing since he passed that I sleep with every night, and I took it with me. I had it around my neck the whole time. So, when they put her on top of me it was kind of like both of us being present,” she says.
Their daughter has certainly been a blessing because she sees him in her. “You have days that you look at her and you feel happiness and gratitude. And then there are other days where you feel afraid and you feel lonely and you feel the weight of his absence again.” Arias says. “He makes such an impact in your life, that his absence just feels so heavy.”
“I will forever talk about him. I will never let his memory die. I will always keep him alive, no matter how much that hurts me. Because she deserves that from me; and from all of us. And so does he,” she says. “He was a beautiful person, we who truly knew him talk about him that way and value him that way, and we’ll continue to do that.”
