Dear Olivia,
I’m still sending thank you cards to all the people in our lives who have gone out of their way to be here for our family. I send at least five cards a week. Some include a Livy memory bracelets. Others have a brief but thoughtful note inside. Your dad gave memory bracelets to all of his peers on the Matrix board a couple weeks back and I did the same at the Advisory Commission on Special Education, (ACSE). In fact, that was the week near the end of February where I felt less together, while at work. Our ACSE chair opened the meeting with an announcement about your passing, which I knew she was going to do. Then she said that our meeting was being held in your memory…that part I wasn’t aware of. It was nice surprise, but also a tear jerker. It was one of those moments when I felt really grateful, but horribly sad at the same time. It’s those moments that make my insides drown in sorrow.

As always, I find myself talking about you and your brother in the present, even though one of you isn’t here. I say things like, my kids or Olivia is, but I never say, “was.”

I hear myself say it and then move past it as quickly as it flowed from my mouth. It’s a delayed reaction. I never go back and correct myself or add in, when Livy was alive. It makes me feel like your still with me…at least in spirit.

We had all of the youngest Webber cousins visit us this weekend. I wish you could have been here. Miriam and Rose are beautiful just like you and Morgan. Sage throughly enjoyed playing with them and when they left he was heartbroken. He said, “My friends are all gone.” 

Then he broke my heart. He pointed to your pictures on the wall of our living room and said, “My friend, sissy, gone and I have no friends.” 

Sage is two. He doesn’t understand why you’re gone. He knows, but in his world you were sick and because of that you went to live with Grandma Donna. That’s his version of the story. The positive of that is he’s not afraid to talk about it. We encourage him to bring up your name. We talk about you at breakfast, throughout the day, at dinner, in the bathtub and at bedtime. We gently kiss your peaceful green and gold box of ashes nightly. It’s important to us that Sage always remember his sissy and that you are his forver friend.

We love and miss you so much! 

Always,
Momma