Uh Oh

As Cory's birthday gets closer, I find myself hypersensitive around others her age or even around talk of others her age.  I mentally make a list of all the things she didn't get to have or to do and it bows me over.  I resent the parents of the live children; I almost resent the live children themselves.  I resent the driver and I resent God (or would resent him if I were absolutely certain of his existence, which since the grotesque and highly unjust death of my firstborn, I'm just frankly not).

I mourn- again- over Cory's too short life.  I beat myself up- again- for making the bad call to let her walk to the store.  And then, I find myself standing on the side of the road that unbearably hot July afternoon just past four, beside an incredibly kind stranger, again taking it all in- the trauma to her tiny body (the police scanner reported her to be ten or twelve, I believe, due to her petite size), the confusion, the horror.

Lately, I've wondered a lot about her last moments, or even that single last moment.  Surely, she was in her survival brain state- fight, flight, or freeze.  I wonder if the car was coming so fast that she didn't have time to even try to move out of the way or if when she saw it coming, she simply froze to the spot, horror stricken.  "Uh oh..."  I think about this, because I can't help it, and my heart breaks for her a little bit more.