A Sad Time

The other day I got this Facebook notice from a former co-worker from Northern Quest. She was an African American woman who I knew for years and resigned to have her baby three years ago. So, I was pleasantly surprised that she sent a post to me. Most of the time people who used to be on Facebook friends’ list cancel or delete these former contacts. I assumed she did the same.

At any rate she showed  a collage of photos of her and her daughter. She then mentioned how her two-year-old daughter had passed and was going to buy an urn for her and bury her next to her grandmother at the cemetery.

Two years old! Wow, it’s hard to grasp what she must be feeling right now, how utterly alone she must feel losing her only daughter. The cause was kidney failure which I suppose is something congenital. I couldn’t imagine something environmental would be the cause of someone so young.

I tried doing research on it and of course all the statistical analysis and studies told me very little. At least it didn’t tell me anything except that both enfant and child mortality rates in most of the developed world are going down, and a study done on acute kidney disease was so academic and dry as to make little or no sense to what the author was trying to express.

The hardest job I ever had was when I worked for the cemetery company in Richland, Washington. It was a grave I had to dig by hand on account it was meant for a four-year-old child and an earth mover would disturb the other graves too much. The ground was rocky and the grave was only to be big for the parents to come and visit on those special occasions we all feel is fitting. It was an area reserved for the children who passed from any number of illnesses, accidents or worse. I never like to consider the worse, but that too happens much too often these days. I know the innocent children always go to Heaven. After all, they aren’t corrupted by the evil influence of mankind.

I pray that her daughter is in a better place where her spirit is flying with the angels of Heaven and Jesus is smiling down on her with love and tenderness and mercy.