Christmas morning, a time for celebration and coming together, became a time for unimaginable sorrow for social media influencer Melissa Mae Carlton and her husband, Tom, as they said goodbye to their youngest daughter, Molly, with the whole world around them celebrating and enjoying the day.
The tragedy has happened when their family was still trying to cope with a devastating event that befell them in April 2024 when their 9-year-old daughter, Abi, died due to sepsis. Losing two daughters in a short span of two years has left Carlton family speechless in expressing their grief.
Melissa reported that her little sister, Molly, had been missing her big sister terribly. Abi had been ever-present in her thoughts. It was as if she rarely ever let a day go by without mentioning Abi to someone, wondering when she will get to see her again. On Christmas morning, when she wrote to say she was with Abi at last, that was the only glimpse of comfort she got among all the pain she was going through.
The family has not chosen to provide information regarding the circumstances surrounding the death and the age at which Molly passed. What the family has been very open with regards to is the level of pain they have been experiencing. Melissa described the day as one filled with shock, tragedy, and the unimaginable, something that she asserts continues to be difficult to grasp. “I feel numb,” she posted.
Later photographs revealed a moment of eternity in grief—a moment that I, myself, can hardly contemplate: Melissa, Tom, and Molly in a hospital photo, embracing in a hospital room, holding each other in the way in which no parent can ever imagine being held by their child in a final farewell.
They also thanked “the many people who have surrounded them with prayers and support and asked that these prayers continue.” The coming days, Melissa said, “will feel heavy and overwhelming. We don’t know where the strength will come from.”
The children have been especially impacted by this loss as Melissa remembered one of her sons, Harry, saying that when he and his sister traveled to Arizona, his sister, Molly, whispered that she wanted to be with her sister. “She got what she wanted,” he said, which was very painful but expressed the relationship between the two girls.
In addition to that, the couple has a daughter called Lily who grows up with love and sorrow within the family.
Melissa, who is involved in an artistic business based on her faith and has a massive following online, is one who has always been vocal about grief and how it affects everything, especially the holidays. After Abi’s death, Melanie talked about how difficult Christmas became, even though it is supposed to be a season of joy. She said that strength is not an end to the pain, but learning to live with it.
She has also shared how their home has been different since loss has become part of their lives. Perfect is no longer perfect. The end result is comfort, warmth, and signs of kids everywhere. The family made “Abi angels,” hung their homemade ornaments on trees, and framed Abi’s favorite holiday pajama pair. These are all efforts to keep Abi near.
“This,” Melissa once wrote, “is what Christmas looks like now: a time of year not only of decorations and traditions, but of memory and love and longing.” Now, however, with Molly missing as well, the love and the longing extend even further. And so, as their community gathers in prayer alongside them, families are being upheld in prayer by many for the two sisters who, no matter how far too short their lives were, made an eternal mark on all who loved them.
