Thank you all for your well wishes and your prayers. My stepdaughter’s mom passed away Wednesday night. It was a long, hard battle and her body just gave out. My stepdaughter is a wreck, understandably, but we are trying to do what we can to help her through this. She is pregnant with her second child so it’s important that she continue to take care of herself.

The funeral is this afternoon and my husband and I will be attending. I wasn’t sure if I should go - I felt funny. My stepdaughter always wanted her parents back together and believed that I was the thing standing in their way. There is a lot more to it than she knows, or needs to know for that fact, but nonetheless I have felt like an outsider. I feel it’s appropriate of me to be there to show my respect but I don’t want to upset anyone that is already feeling a tremendous amount of pain. My husband seems to think she would appreciate my going - I’m just torn. I want to be there for her but I don’t want to make her feel like “What the hell is she doing here?”

Funerals and dying have always unnerved me. I have never done well faced with so many people in such outward emotional pain. I remember when I was in high school, we had 3 suicides in one year and I will never forget the parent’s faces from any of those 3 funerals. I have only lost grandparents, none of them was I old enough to be a part of the process, so I didn’t really understand what was going on. I can’t imagine what my stepdaughter is going through, I only know that losing my own parents has been a real fear of mine over the last couple of years as they are advancing in age.

I know we will get through this as a family. We are strong. I just wish I could take away her pain.