For Madeline

Madeline Spohr will be laid to rest today at 2:30 PST. My thoughts are with her family and her friends. I can't even wrap my brain around how difficult this must me - it leaves me gasping for breath to think about it.

If you haven't donated yet, please consider doing so. The March of Dimes page is here and the PayPal site, to help with hospital and funeral expenses, is here.


But Maddie isn't the only baby lost. Thalon Bruce Meyers died on April 12th. He wasn't quite four months old and once again, my heart breaks. A donation page has been set up for his family as well.

I don't know these families, but my heart hurts for them and my brain rages at the unfairness of it all.

But, on the other side of the coin is this tremendous outpouring of love, time and money for both families. Maddie's March of Dimes walk has raised nearly $30,000, just since last week. Thalon's PayPal account has received $3700 in donations since Monday. People are posting links and pictures and tributes to both children that are touching and heartfelt and raw. People are flying in for funerals and organizing walk-a-thon teams and aggregating links and photos and it's incredible. Simply incredible. Most of this was done via Twitter - you can check out the hash tags for #maddie and #thalon at Twitter.com - and done with a speed bordering on lightning. My mother dismisses things like Twitter and Facebook as a complete waste of time and they can be, but when tragedy strikes, it can also be an incredible place of comfort and friendship and solace. This is what the internet community looks like at its best. It's beautiful.