My daughter died 20 years ago today.

[PatSeg]

73. One of the things that really bothers me

when people die much too young, is that because it is so painful and uncomfortable, many sweep them under the rug. It is as if they'd never even existed, as if a short life is somehow invalid, too incomplete to be recognized or remembered.

My mother's brothers died before I was born. They were sixteen and eighteen years old. My siblings and I knew hardly anything about them, because it was too painful to talk about. So in our world, they weren't even ghosts. It was like they never were real, except for their very tragic death. We knew nothing about their personalities, their hopes and dreams, or their childhood antics, because it was forbidden to ask about them. For us, they were only identified by their deaths, not by their lives.

When there is nothing else we can do for them, we can at least make sure they are not forgotten as you are doing for Bekah.