I love her expression in this one

That was a face she made. One thing I love about those photos is how often I'm struck by "yes, I remember that face!"

In addition to the ER doctors, i have a lot of rage for the doctor who cut her off from the visiting nurse. He knew she could not get adequate help in the ER. That is why he arranged the visiting nurse in the first place.

Yeah. That's on a slow burn for me.

I thought the same thing, Burrell

Allyson, I'll email you in a moment but just touching base here. WRT photos and words for the service, we can offer her sister the pictures that Ginger collected on flickr. And for words, that's why I'm emailing you.

In addition to the ER doctors, i have a lot of rage for the doctor who cut her off from the visiting nurse. He knew she could not get adequate help in the ER. That is why he arranged the visiting nurse in the first place.

we need to find out exactly who that doctor is.

In addition to the ER doctors, i have a lot of rage for the doctor who cut her off from the visiting nurse. He knew she could not get adequate help in the ER. That is why he arranged the visiting nurse in the first place.

Me too. I want to know his rationale for that. I also want to kick him in the balls, repeatedly.

I've had 3 experiences like the one you had in my own life.

Me too, and I woke up exhausted on Sunday morning from these crazy dreams - I told my husband about some of them, including one "all the Buffistas were at a swimming pool, sitting around the edge, but someone was in th pool and sinking super-deep, like ocean-deep and I was trying to dive in and rescue her and caught a glimpse of close-cropped ochre hair. I thought "Oh, it's ita, of course she can swim, she's probably OK."

Then I spent Sunday wondering what my brain was using ita and Buffistas as a metaphor for.

I didn't have prophetic death dreams about ita, but I have had them about several relatives who died and I had them in close enough proximity (and pre-proximity) that I cannot ignore them.

I hope these dreams comfort you, one day.

I cannot believe this gorgeous, brilliant, fierce woman is gone. I reject this reality and substitute one of my own (which is so not no-ita).

Thank you all for sharing your moments. I'm sorry this is all so hard.

I've been having a hard time getting out of bed. Writing her obituary is such horseshit. Talking about her in the past tense is stupid and wrong.

I'm either in denial, angry, or sleeping. I was going through photos looking for the "perfect photo" for her obituary. That's such incredible bullshit. This is so wrong. Everything is wrong. I'm struggling to find reasons to get up in the morning, with my perfectly not-in-pain head.

Oh, Allyson, this is all so natural a response. You shouldn't have to be writing her obituary. But you're doing as well as you can, and it's so good that you're doing all this tough work as a gift to her.

I think you are forgetting how fantastic you are, Allyson. Which I get, because I have been where you have been this past year and I know how easy it is to forget your own worth. But truly truly, not only do you have lovely hair, but you are awesome. ita was probably my number one Buffista idol, practically a celebrity in my brain because of all the awesome. But you? You are probably number two.

Get out of bed, put one foot in front of the other, and just go through the motions. Eventually it will get easier and at some point you'll realize you are living again instead of just pretending.