24 days later

Damn.  Time flies.

Since the last post, I've spent 8 days and 7 days with my Girl Scouts camping.  5 days and 4 nights were primitive camping.  That means pooping in the open in a pit latrine in the woods and being thankful that there was a pit latrine, walls or no walls.

In the Boundary Waters I found Katie, or maybe she found me, really every second of every day.  The last night when I was weeping because I didn't want this time with her to end, I could practically feel her leaning against my shoulder.  I now choose to believe that there are signs everywhere, its just up to us to pick them up.  I never felt like this before, it's only since Katie's death that I've looked.  All the other parents at Compassionate Friends tell stories of signs every meeting.  My counselor says that it's very real and not in my head.

I just still can't wrap my head around the fact that she's not here.

One year ago she was in her second week of school in Oklahoma.  One year ago we had already bought tickets for her first trip home.  Yes, this was home.

She had told me that if she didn't live with Daddy then that she'd never live with Daddy.  She wanted it to be fair, she said.  (That was my sweet "justice" girl, trying to find a balance of fairness.)

That was quite prophetic, don't you think?  One month later.  ONE MONTH LATER.

Now I'm counting down the 16 days until the first anniversary of her death.

DAMN YOU WHO TOOK HER FROM ME!

It wasn't God.  I've not made up yet.  I'm still angry.  But it wasn't God.

It was man.  The same as if someone took a gun and shot her.  It it was a person with a gun, I could direct my anger and grief at a specific person.  Here it's just some corporation (and I don't care what the SCOTUS says, corporations aren't people).  I'm some grieving mother whose name is unknown to the corporation who killed her. If it weren't for the lawsuit and the lawyers, the killer would not even know that my baby was killed by their actions.

I need someone to stand up and tell me that he or she did this to us.  I need someone to know how I hurt.