Lizzie Kieffer Shares Emotional Video Filmed Days Before Daughter Lily’s Death
The Missouri influencer opened up about the quiet morning she captured on camera just days before losing her 1-year-old daughter, Lily Louise.
St. Louis, October 15 EST: The video lasts less than a minute. A little girl in pajamas, a kitchen full of morning light, her sister giggling nearby. That’s all it shows. But for Lizzie Kieffer, it’s the last bit of normal she ever filmed. She posted it to Instagram this week, saying it was recorded just a few days before her one-year-old daughter, Lilian “Lily” Louise, died unexpectedly in April.
“Days like this aren’t promised,” she wrote in the caption. “I wish I could go back to that simple day.” There’s no music in the clip. No edits. Just the quiet, everyday sound of family life.
The Ordinary That Became Precious
Kieffer, a Missouri-based physical therapist who built a following for her posts about parenting and wellness, said she’d forgotten the video was on her phone until recently. Watching it again, she told followers, felt like looking into a world that doesn’t exist anymore.
According to People, the post struck a deep chord online. Thousands of parents responded with stories of their own, describing the ache of realizing how fragile those “nothing-special” mornings really are.
“It’s the kind of moment you’d never think to save,” one comment read. “And now it means everything.”
The Day The World Fell Apart
Lily died on April 23, 2025. The family later learned she had a large brain mass, something doctors said had gone undetected because she’d shown no symptoms.
“We are shattered,” Lizzie and her husband, Matt, wrote at the time. “We had no idea anything was wrong.” As ABC News reported, Lizzie was pregnant with their third child when it happened. That pregnancy carried her through the early months of grief, forcing her to move, eat, sleep all while trying to make sense of a loss that came without warning.
In August, she told People that she often feels pulled in two directions. “You’re grieving one baby and preparing for another,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense, but it’s your life now.”
Turning Her Platform Into Something Else
Before Lily’s death, Kieffer’s social media feed was cheerful clips from the clinic where she worked, family outings, birthday balloons. Since then, it’s changed. The tone is slower. Posts arrive when they arrive. She’s written about faith, about anger, about how people assume grief comes in stages when it actually moves in circles. Some days she disappears for a while, then returns with a small update or a few words of reflection.
“Sometimes I want to stop sharing,” she admitted over the summer. “Other times I think this might be the reason I’m still here.” Matt writes less often, but when he does, it’s plain and steady. Earlier this year, he called his wife “the strongest person I know” and said their home has become “a place of both laughter and tears.”
A Video That Says Everything By Saying Nothing
The video she posted this week doesn’t mention Lily’s illness or her death. It doesn’t need to. It’s the contrast that speaks that brief moment of life untouched by what was coming. In one comment that caught Kieffer’s attention, a follower wrote, “You can almost hear the silence before heartbreak.”
That line stayed with her. “That’s exactly it,” she replied. She ended her caption by thanking those who have stayed with her online through the past six months. “Grief and grace,” she wrote, “they can live in the same heart.”
According to People, the post gathered more than 200,000 likes in less than a day. But for once, the numbers didn’t matter. The video wasn’t meant to perform. It was meant to remember.
Life After The Unthinkable
The Kieffers still live in suburban Missouri. They’ve kept most details about Lily’s condition private. There have been no public medical filings or investigations, just a family trying to stay steady. Their new baby arrived healthy. Lizzie posts photos sometimes a tiny hand, a smile, a sister’s embrace. They’re small pieces of hope, tucked between moments of grief that haven’t faded.
“Some days I smile before I cry,” she wrote in September. “Some days I don’t know which one will come first.” That’s how she describes it now: living with both. The video, with its quiet and its light, is part of that balance. It’s a reminder of a day that once felt forgettable and now never will be.
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Trained in war zones, raised in Newark, and seasoned in city hall, Jordan blends grit reporting with deep integrity. From floods to finance bills, they’re always first on scene and last to leave.
