"This is my family. I found it, all on my own. It's little, and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good."

But when we need each other we are here. Even when people need support or help for their other non Buffistas families We are still here for each other.

To my way of thinking, that is the definition of a perfect family.

The Moji stories are breaking my heart especially bad. I'm sure she's never heard my name but she was so important to ita and they were so close, I feel like I know her. I know a lot about her, at least. She is strong and fierce and loyal like her sister. And she gets that a group of what should be strangers on the internet is one of the most community-like communities I have known.

And I just assumed there'd be some endless array of F2Fs and visits to LA, and there weren't.

I sort of thought that too. Even when I moved. I thought we'd all get together again. And anyone missing would be a conflict or some thing easily understood. I didn't want to think it could be this.

I think that in front of ita's parents and sister, explicit statements about the Buffistas being ita's family might be seen as being hurtful. We don't mean "we're her family instead of her birth family", but that's what statements about families-by-choice often mean.

It's not that the intent is wrong, but her not-at-all-estranged blood family will be right there, and it's important to give their grief precedence at their beloved daughter and sister's funeral.

Betsy, that's an excellent point. I'm not saying there's a hierarchy to grief (i.e., I'm grieving more than you are!), per se, because some friends ARE chosen family, and there's no way to quantify a loss.

And yet, I've been thinking, for the past week, if I'm so gutted by ita's death, what must her family be feeling?

I think we can express how very much ita meant to us as a friend without using language that might be hurtful to her family despite the intent behind it.

I support Betsy's statement...also from the perspective that we, meaning the Stateside folks, had the option to be with and see her more often than they did. Which, in a time of grief could be greatly inflated.

I'd love for the statement to be that we loved her like family, but that can be offered with the touch of an arm, rather than in front of the congregation. Especially, as someone else noted, ita had other virtual communities who might lay the same claim.

It's funny, ita is the second person whose death has made me think, 'what is it about this person that makes so MANY people want to claim her as their own?'

My friend Liz was the same way.

I wish I could say the same!

Betsy's right - the chosen family is, for so many of us, absolutely vital, but one of the things I always found magical about ita was how her ability to create and draw people into these chosen families was clearly not so much driven the need for something she'd never had, as by an expansion of the deep groundedness she already had. She knew and loved her parents and Moji so much and was so completely assured of their knowledge and love in return that it gave her a superabundance of... I don't even know. Of superabundance.

I think it would be okay if it was in the context that ita was all about family: first and foremost, her beloved parents and sister and her wide-ranging relatives. That love of family extended to the families she built online....

I love both JZ and Ginger's words.

With regard to the reading- do we know who will be reading? ALlyson? Because I definately support whatever is easiest and feels right for that person, whether it be an excerpt from Safe Harbor from Ann Arbor to something they write themselves to a statement we prepare as a group.

I think it would be safest to stay away from the word family if it even has any potential to hurt her blood family. In addition to family here, ita created and was at the center of a community, in which people near to the center and far from the center feel her loss.