Then on the 4th, a little girl we know was tragically killed by a stray bullet. I am friends with her mother and her aunt. It has been absolutely heartbreaking. The shock and randomness of it has been numbing. I had photographed this little girl and spent time last Friday prepping the images to send to her stepmother for her funeral slideshow. It was the saddest thing. To open each file and look into her beautiful smiling face was so hard. A smiling face full of so much possibility for the future.
The funeral was beautiful and overwhelming. Watching a mother grieve the death of her child is a heartbreak in itself. Watching a father grieve his daughter is almost too much to bare. I think I felt that way because watching a mother grieve makes me imagine losing my own child...but watching the father grieve makes me imagine my husband hurting and that is even worse.
I don't mean to be a downer today, on this beautiful (albeit hot) summer day. But this is where I've been. It is though, a reminder of life's fragility. A reminder to make sure our children feel and know our love for them every single day because anything can happen.
The beauties of Blair's life are endless, but her final gift was the donation of six of her organs. It was her choice. She had voiced it to her father a couple of weeks before her unexpected death after finding his drivers license in his wallet and inquiring what it meant. Isn't that a beautiful thing? Just thinking of it brings tears.
