Five months have passed, but the pain is still so agonizing Kurtis Foster can barely talk about it.

"I don't know how to explain it," the former Wild defenseman said. "It was the hardest thing that's ever happened to me, that's ever happened to my wife or could ever happen to anybody.

"But Steph and I have stuck together. It's a long, tough process."

Life has a way of reordering priorities in painful ways. Foster, now with the Edmonton Oilers and ready to play the Wild on Thursday for the first time since leaving in 2009, has experienced that more than most.

There was, of course, that accident in San Jose 2 1/2 years ago when Foster was hit from behind while chasing a puck. His femur snapped in half, and many felt his hockey career was over.

But he persevered through 11 months of excruciating rehab, returned to play 10 games the following season for the Wild and then went to Tampa Bay last season, where he had a career year with 42 points.

A month after the season ended, Foster's life was turned upside down again.

On May 10, only five days after his and his wife's first child was born, Lila Kimberly died in a Tampa hospital because of a head injury suffered during birth.

The tragedy came two weeks after Foster was named a finalist for the Bill Masterton Trophy, given annually to the NHL player who best exemplifies perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.

"I can't even imagine what he and his wife went through," said defenseman Nick Schultz, who attended the memorial in Peterborough, Ontario, with his wife, Jessica. "To prepare for your first baby for nine months who's clearly healthy, and to have that excitement and that joy, and then for this to happen, it's devastating."

Edmonton's call a relief

Foster passed on the NHL awards ceremony in Las Vegas. He deactivated his Facebook account because reading all the notes congratulating him on his daughter's birth was too heartbreaking.