The photo is just a few inches wide and in it, the girls are wearing what appear to be knitted pink stocking caps. They are asleep, their heads rocked back and they are off in that deep sleep only newborn babies find. For knowing them only by a photo, I was surprised to be so struck with their passing – conjoined, just a few days old, and lost to the world already.

I clicked on the headline sometime late last week and read about the birth of Joy and Joya at an area hospital and expected little more than a story about an amazing birth. Instead, I found these girls pictured in the arms of their mother who was proud of them as they were, born close enough together to share a liver and heart.

Without giving their predicament further thought, I went home for the weekend and forgot about what I’d seen in a few down moments at work. Friday night, my whole family – my wife and our three children – were felled with a stomach virus that pretty much brought our plans to an end.

I was worried all three nights for our children, the oldest of which is five. Being sick is the first in an endless string of realities they each have to face about the world. I watched them all, at separate times, drift off to sleep and even relegated myself to a temporary bed in the nursery beside our youngest daughter to make sure her night was uneventful.

When I saw the headline on Monday, at first I felt a deep sandess and then a silliness for the concern I had for my kids’ stomach ailments. Over the weekend the community had rallied around these children. “KC’s conjoined twins …” the headline reads.

And, the silliness wore off. Stories like these are a reminder to parents about how precious and fragile their children are – whether they are alive only a few days or 92 years. There’s a built-in emotion and it has nothing to do with the way an article is written or what a photo happens to capture, though that might grab your attention first. This feeling is deeper than that, and it comes with being human.