UPDATE: Picking Up Pieces After Mommy's Gone

When they left the hospital with their newborn twins that spring day nearly two years ago, Maggie and Kevin Beirne felt they could at last begin their life together as a family.

For five anxious weeks, they seemed to live at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, where their twins were born two months premature and confined to plexiglass cocoons until they were strong enough to go home.

On the afternoon of Dec. 1, Maggie and Kevin were rushing back to Holy Cross -- this time in an ambulance, sirens wailing. While hanging Christmas decorations, Maggie, 31, had a massive seizure and a heart attack. She had slipped into a coma.

Early on, doctors were hopeful she would recover, and Kevin, 30, allowed himself to believe she was going to make it. But a few days after arriving at Holy Cross, Maggie took a turn for the worse.

On the morning of Dec. 6, with about 20 of her family and friends around her and Kevin holding her hand, Maggie died.

She was 31 years old, with a freckled face and a hint of red in her light brown hair. She worked as a social worker for the District, helping foster children. She and her husband met during a Habitat for Humanity trip on spring break while they were students at Catholic University. Maggie was given to thoughtful gestures, her friends and family recalled, such as when she made the babysitter cry by dressing Betsy and Martin in T-shirts that read, "We love Sheila."

Friends and family remembered how she sang along to Bon Jovi with her car windows rolled down and took control of the DJ table at weddings. She used the bridesmaid's dress she wore at her sister's wedding as the trim for a blanket she made for her niece. She loved Mafia movies, not for the violence but for the family dynamics. She wanted a wreath for Christmas because it was something the whole family could share.

In 2003, Maggie had an episode that doctors believed might have been a seizure, Kevin said. She showed no ill effects, so they assumed everything was fine.

Dec. 1 had started out as such a nice day. Maggie and Kevin enjoyed their Saturday by playing with the kids in the living room of their home in Kensington until it was time for Martin's and Betsy's afternoon nap. Maggie decided to use the down time to decorate the Christmas tree -- a surprise for the children when they awoke -- and get some laundry done. They would have a quiet dinner, maybe pizza.

These were the times she was happiest -- at home, with her kids and husband, Kevin said. "Our lives became so focused on right here," he said, sitting in his living room. "We rarely went out to dinner. We'd rather just stay home as a family."

Maggie, who was featured in a 2006 Washington Post Mother's Day story, juggled parenthood with her work as an administrative review specialist with the District's Child and Family Services Agency. Kevin is the head of the English Department at St. John's College High School in the District.

"She held everything together," Kevin said.