if only

March 15, 2003

i'm currently working with a girl named sylvie on a project in my design & systems 1 class. before this, i never knew sylvie at all - i just knew what she looked like. so over the past week, i e-mailed her a few times to try and get to know her a bit more. yesterday when i was talking with her, she told me her grandmother had passed away. my heart sank. i was completely speechless. i wanted to say something, anything, but no words verbalized from my mouth. i was stunned and stood there completely shocked. how do you respond to something like that?

we had to meet with our teacher later on that day, and she was almost brought to tears when she was trying to tell him what happened. she actually asked me to tell him. i tried to find out some more about her relationship with her grandma and what happened. apparently she was pretty close with her and for the past few weeks, her grandma has been pretty sick. and i believe it was just yesterday or thursday when she passed away. i wanted to tell her that i'd be praying for her and her family. but all i could mutter out was, a very lame "don't worry about school - it's not important. just do what you have to do". i was kicking myself for not being able to say anything more than that. and then she was off. she's gone out of the country for several days. WHY couldn't i say more? why didn't i say more? i'm beating myself over it. God is in control of it all - i don't know if she's Christian or if her grandma was, but it doesn't change the fact that God is in control. i wish she knew that. i wish she'd know that there's a God in heaven who loves her and her family very much. *sigh*

please pray for her.