Thinking

I have spent much of the last week thinking. My heart is still so sad for Heather and Mike Spohr over the loss of their beautiful daughter Maddie. Her funeral service is tomorrow afternoon at 2:30 PST. Her family has asked that people wear purple in her honor and I will be doing that for her family. I have turned my Twitter avatar and my Twitter page purple. My blog is already purple. I have donated to Heather's March of Dimes page (and Mike has one too) and will be donating to the PayPal account that has been set up to help the family cover the expenses of burying their daughter. You can find both of those links if you click thru your feed reader to my blog; they are in my sidebar.

I have been DOING these things because they take my mind off how helpless I feel. Whenever I start letting myself THINK too much about what Heather and Mike are going through, I start to cry. Their little girl is gone and when I let myself think too much about it I feel sick. I cannot imagine not seeing one of my children ever again. I cannot imagine having to plan a funeral. If it is overwhelming to me, I truly cannot wrap my head around how Heather and Mike are managing. They have wonderful friends with them, like Casey and their friend Meghan has taken on the absolutely enormous task of coordinating all the information, the PayPal account and the service arrangements (please go to Meghan's blog for any and all information you might want; she has a "For Maddie" tab on her home page). The massive outpouring of love from the internets has been amazing for them, and the LA Times did an article about them yesterday (you can find it here).

So if I've taken anything positive at all away from this, it's that there is goodness in humanity. Heather and Mike have suffered a loss so unimaginable for most of us, yet we have banded together to support them. They're going to need so much support down the road. I know I will continue to be here for them in any small way that I can. After all, that is what friends are for.