Our culture goes into festive overdrive every December. Elaborate store fronts, cheerful street scenes, incessant TV ads all trumpet the same message. Be happy. But many families will have to make room for a decidedly uninvited house guest at the holidays: grief. Everyone’s loss is wholly unique to them. As is their journey through boundless pain. This is the story of Andrew Kaczynski , 32, his wife Rachel Ensign, 33, and their cherubic 9-month-old daughter Francesca , who died last Christmas Eve after a fierce battle with pediatric brain cancer. The couple shared a mix of raw, frustrated and hopeful emotions with USA TODAY for two reasons: to spotlight the cancer research fundraising efforts they’ve undertaken in their daughter’s memory , and to give others a window into how it is possible to suffer the unimaginable and live on with joy. ‘We’re heartbroken’: CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski reveals 9-month-old daughter died on Christmas Eve Journalists Andrew Kaczynski and Rachel Ensign smile alongside their daughter, Francesca,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nine-month-old Francesca Kaczynski died last Christmas Eve after battling brain cancer. Here’s what her parents learned about grief, love and hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[117,1],"tags":[247,275,232,230,55],"class_list":["post-202415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-relationships","category-news","tag-cancer","tag-christmas","tag-family-relationships","tag-relationships","tag-society"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}