It's four in the afternoon, and I am fucking drunk.  And I have to sober up in the next two hours, so that's going to be fun.

A good friend of mine was staying with my family this past week.  Her one-year-old baby girl, Chloe, was undergoing open-heart-surgery at a hospital in my city. 

The surgery went fine.  About ten hours later Chloe suffered a massive stroke.  About thirty hours after that the doctors declared her brain-dead.  She was unhooked from everything but the respirator, placed in her parents' arms, and then the respirator was withdrawn.

Chloe died at 2:09 pm Saturday, June 21st.  I was there, and it was the most horrible, terrifying, painful thing I've ever been through in my entire life, and she wasn't even my baby.

A lot of my prayers lately have been about me taking on someone else's pain, at least just a little bit, if it will lessen their burden.  Fuck me, but I think it's working, and I almost wish I could take it back.

This morning when I logged onto Postsecret.com, I found a postcard that quoted Vonnegut, it read:  "Please find comfort in knowing that everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."  And now I know that something can be both a knife to the gut and a intangible teddy bear to cling to, all at the same time.

There will most certainly be more on this later, but right now, I need to go break some more shit, cry, and take a shower.  In that order, only put "cry" on repeat.