sadness

i usually find new blogs to read by accident - googling for recipes, surfing the community boards at thenest.com, posts on facebook, perusing the blogrolls of my friends. they have such a wide variety of interests, and it's interesting to check out the stuff that catches their attention.

a couple of days ago, nanette posted a link to her friend heather's blog on facebook. i didn't really pay much attention to it until yesterday morning, when her status update read: "absolutely heartbroken." i immediately clicked on the link to the blog, but the site was down. using my super special detective skills, i turned to google and found that heather's baby girl - only a month-ish younger than the bean - had passed away.

it wasn't long before the site was fixed - it had received so much attention after the tragic news broke that the server crashed. luckily, a couple of heather's friends went in and fixed the problem, and i was able to go in and read about heather and mike's precious daughter, maddie. she was a preemie - born almost three months too early - and while her first few days were tough, she fought for her life, and won.

but only for seventeen precious months. a few days ago, she fell ill, and this time, she lost the battle.

i get goosebumps and teary just typing those words. just three days ago, i didn't know heather, mike, and maddie even existed. and today, i'm debating whether or not to trek out to the west side on tuesday to attend her memorial service. i went back into their blog's archives and read more posts, and while i smiled at the funny stories and gazed into maddie's beautiful eyes, i was just so sad. because as i read, i knew what the outcome was.

the teen asked me what i was doing, and as i told her the story in a nutshell, she said "stop, mom, that's so depressing."

true. but it's stories like this that make me realize that the difficulties that the wan house has been dealing with lately are nothing, nothing compared to this. and it makes me hug my girls and the hub a little tighter and appreciate my life so much more.

if we don't make it to that service, the bean and i are going to spend the day wearing purple in maddie's honor and send lots of prayers to her family. i can't even imagine what they're going through right now, and i really hope that they're okay.

rest in peace, sweet baby girl.