“Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you.” ~Veronica Roth
For hours I’ve sat, empty.
Hollow.
Unable to sleep. Not even able to meditate or pray.
A friend’s twelve-year-old daughter died last night. They turned off her life support. I sat with her and her family and supported them through that awful night, and then when I could do no more I came home.
This little girl didn’t die from cancer, some terrible illness, an accident…
She died because she had been relentlessly bullied and cyber-bullied at the boarding school where her family had thought she was happy and safe. She died because she’d tried to take her own life and she did enough damage that her parents had to finish what she began.
She was twelve. Small as a bird. She’d loved horses and books and playing the violin and baking cupcakes.
Her soul is free now. She has returned to love. We found that space of love together with her last night, and the room was peaceful afterwards, and calm.
But all I can think about this morning was how tiny her body was in that large bed, and how her mother was white with grief and her father broke in front of me and I had no words to make sense of this. For them, or for me.
