Mostly because I love the way you smile when I tell you things worked out or that something you said helped. A lot of what you and I talk about does help. But lately stuff is coming at me so fast and furious I don’t have time to get over one thing before I’m thrown headfirst into the next.Every day I Google Danielle’s name to see if there’s another article. Her family started a memorial Web site and I can’t stop looking at her photos and reading the little facts that made up her life. She was supposed to be a bridesmaid in her friend’s wedding this summer and they’d just had their dresses fitted. I cried, thinking of her dress hanging in a closet somewhere. You asked if I might be obsessing about the victims because I’m trying to come to terms with my own worst fears of losing my daughter, but I don’t think that’s it. I don’t know why I put myself into Danielle’s pain, why I conjure poignant images, each more painful than the last. Why I can’t stop wanting to know everything about her life.You taught me years ago that we can’t choose how we feel about something; we can just choose how we deal with those feelings.
