Heavy Heart

11/23/11: Tonight I have an especially heavy heart. My mother-in-law, Linda passed. I didn't think I was in the mood to write tonight, but I'm feeling especially guilty because I was going to come down last weekend to see her but Adiee and I came down with this horrible cold/cough that just wouldn't quit. The last thing I wanted to do was go and spread our sickly germs with everyone and possibly prevent someone else from being able to be by her side. The girls didn't understand because the last time we saw her (2 months ago at Nate & Charlotte's wedding) she was "fine".

Watching everyone's reactions as they said their goodbyes was extremely hard on me. I can't stand to see others in such agony. I just sat quietly trying my hardest not to lose control of myself.

The girls stayed in the church nursery with their young cousins during the funeral service. But after everybody had left, Gerry, Maggie, Brandon, Kristin, and Kasey (and families) took the kids back to her burial site for closure and to hopefully help them understand. Crimson and Mikenna's reaction as we stood there was absolutely heart-wrenching. Mikenna hadn't expressed much sadness up until this point; she cried for hours and was difficult to console. She wrote her a note saying how much she loved her and that she wished she would come back... You get the point. I can't hardly talk about it myself, I don't want to make you read it. Adiee wrote her name (and her family's names) on a piece of paper since that's the extent of her writing to this point. They wanted to take it back to her, so we went back again and Kasey buried it so that Grandma Linda would have them forever. It's still surreal to us but we will all miss her dearly.

This post took a while to publish, it's been sitting unfinished for about a month now and even still it is hard for me to conclude...