Watching from the outside looking in....

I am going to a funeral on Friday to support my friends through their grief upon losing their 9 day old daughter. Unfortunately this is not the first funeral of a child that I have or will attend and it's simply not something that I will ever understand. Why children? That is a question that my friend Amy, upon losing her 3 1/2 year old son, said will never be answered. No answer to that question would make her say "Oh yeah, that makes sense" - so as a parent you would live forever with the unanswered question.

And talking about looking at the situation as a parent - I realized that I really cannot imagine how I would react, feel, continue living. I really can't relate to what my friends who have lost children have felt and continue to feel day to day. Watching the situation from the outside looking in is painful because you feel for the ones you love, but I think that unless you have experienced that great of a loss - you really don't know what that person is feeling.

Grief is something that each person does differently and I learned so much from my friends Joe and Amy as they grieved and continue to grieve the loss of their son - Amy told me that each person grieves different moments, different times of day, different everything. And because of that she and her husband had to allow one another those times when you simply lose it and just know that they were consumed by grief at that moment.

When I first talk to people who have experienced loss - I am so reserved and scared that I will say something upsetting.....I let them talk first, laugh first, cry first. I know walking up to Jaime and Dave on Friday I will give them hugs and tell them that I am sorry for the loss of their beautiful little girl and from there I will just observe and allow them to grieve and pray that their journey through that grief is one that they can find strength in one another and that they will turn the negative situation into a positive one and that they bring light to CDH and honor Ryann Hope's spirit and strength in doing so.