Journal entry current life as of 4/3/09

Alexis Hoffman, my daughter, would have been 18 on April 2nd. Its hard to believe. I feel as if the memories are getting stronger and more distinct as time moves on. I can remember specific days of her approximated 665 day life. give or take 100 days. The best way to cope with grief is to sometimes block out all memories. I recently remember that since she died on Christmas Day, I had to give her presents to my childhood bff, Kathy. I don't think she really wanted the gifts but she took a few of them anyway. She was 8 months pregnant with Anna when Alexis died. The funeral was hard for a lot of people. My sister said Mary and Lisa cried harder than Barb and Tracy. Tracy G. was not yet a mother and Joan said our h.s. friends who were mothers cried more. It was strange to have the funeral in WBL, Minnesota after I had not lived there for ages. I was living in Stoughton, WI but our daughter died during a heart transplant at the U of Minnesota on Christmas Day so we had the funeral at First Lutheran Church, my home church growing up. All my friends from Stoughton WI came including my favorite pastor, Pastor Ken Anderson who presided. It was colder than a bitch that week and a lot of my friends drove the 5 hours from the Madison WI area to come to the funeral. Many of my local childhood friends came too. It was surreal. I remember sitting with the funeral director at Havenor Funeral Home shooting the breeze like it was someone else's loved ones funeral. My daughter lay in a casket 20 feet away but it just did not seem real. People expressed emotion about the situation but did not directly relate it to her body in the casket. For many it was too hard to accept. Jane V. left her kids in the car with the car running and only came in a few minutes. It was a day we would like to forget in a way.