Well, Heather informed me that I had to take a turn in posting. I don’t usually feel like I have much to say, but I’ll give it a try. Thanks to my mom coming over to watch the kids, we were able to fly to Utah on the 30th and attend the viewing and funeral services for Sadie Huish on the 1st. We’ve posted many times before about Sadie, so I won’t go in to too much background. We’ve been privileged to get to know many wonderful people who have been dealing with DIPG in their families. However, we’ve felt a special connection to the Huish family. I think it’s largely driven by the fact that we’ve had the chance to meet Sadie and her family a couple of times. Even Mara and Sadie met each other once last year. In addition to meeting Sadie and her family, there seems to be so much in common between the two. Lots of similarities in likes and strengths. Put simply, we have been so blessed by knowing Sadie and her family that we felt the only thing we could do was to try and be there for them. Well, as it often turns out, in our effort to ‘help’ we were ‘helped’ by the Huish’s far more than we could have helped them.
The funeral services were beautiful. Both of Sadie’s parents spoke and did wonderful jobs focusing on the positives and the lessons learned from their daughter. They were amazing. There was lots of beautiful music as well that added much to the spirit of the service. We even got to meet Hilary Weeks and her husband Tim and hear her beautiful voice as she sang “Take Me There” from her newest CD (see hilaryweeks.com/blog to read her account of Sadie’s funeral). Heather and I both cried a lot and burned through a lot of tissues. It has been a little over 9 months since we did the same thing for Mara and it felt like a bit of a healing process to participate in something similar, but in a different role. It reminded us of the sweet spirit that was so often in our home when Mara was near the end of her mortal life; as well as the powerful spirit that we feel as we sing about, or hear about, the great plan of happiness that has been prepared for us. Again, the Huish family did a wonderful job and we had the privilege of meeting some of their other family and extended family who have obviously been a great support to them. It’s really interesting to consider the family connections we are blessed with in this life and ponder their continuance into the next.
We weren’t the only other DIPG family there – we also had the privilege of being with Paul and Emily Peterson and Brita Binns, who we’ve posted about previously. They are great people as well. Though we hate the circumstances that have made us friends, we are grateful to have come to know many wonderful people. We took a picture all together at Sadie’s grave.
L to R: Emily and Paul Peterson; Zac, Sam, Tiffany, and Olivia Huish; us; Brita Binns.
Another benefit of the trip to Utah, was that we were able to quickly stop and visit Heather’s sister Kim and her family, including her new baby – Ellen Mara Center. She is very cute and a great addition to the family.
Well, we keep moving ahead – startled by the seemingly rapid passing of time whether we want it to or not. Hopefully we can keep up well enough to continue to improve and be better each day, so that we can be prepared to join Mara and Sadie and others when our time comes.
