Grief.
noun
deep sorrow,
esp. that caused by someone's death
Yesterday, one of my dearest friend's daughter passed away. My friend Elizabeth is the mother of two beautiful children, Kaden (four) and Olivia (four months). Elizabeth laid Olivia down for a nap on the dark morning of January 7th, 2011, and sweet Olivia never woke up. They are still investigating to discover the cause.
It is strange what grief does to a person. I hardly slept last night, nor have I eaten anything all day and I'm not hungry in the slightest. I keep going from tears and uncontrollable sobs to total denial, and Olivia wasn't even my baby. I can hardly function, so multiply all of that by a million and you might have an idea of what Elizabeth and Adam (Olivia's father) must be going through right now. When I visited them, Elizabeth told the story four times and barely cried. Adam said maybe twenty words over the course of almost three hours and cried quite a bit. Elizabeth says that she wants to stay busy, but she is having an awful time making decisions regarding simple things, like whether she should reply to text messages. Quite obviously, we are grieving very differently, but differing even more from us is my mother. She grieves by comforting. She is there 100% for all of us, especially Elizabeth and Adam, and she will do anything and everything for anyone who asks.
I keep wondering how the world is going on without Olivia. She was a perfect, beautiful, sweet four month old baby, and now she is gone, but the world hasn't noticed. I had to serve at Olive Garden tonight and it baffles me that people want to go out to eat and have a good time tonight when a baby passed away so recently. I had a very difficult time caring about what my guests desired. I do realize that this way of thinking is incredibly irrational, but it is present despite this fact.
For Olivia, rest in peace, sweet baby. As a friend said, "You will make a beautiful angel, Olivia."
