Gwendolyn Was Here

I believe the world went a shade darker today with the loss of another brilliant soul. I met Gwen here at OD, and always admired her kindness, optimism and intelligence. There was something so…bright about her, even when she was sad or discouraged. She was an encouragement to me, and her comments always made me smile.

I can hardly believe she’s gone. It was so fast; one day she was all, “This is not exactly the weight loss plan I had in mind” and a week later her mother is posting that she is being released from ICU with only days to live. I can’t quite wrap my head around it.

And because I ‘met’ her here–because I never met her anywhere else–I feel like the grief pooling in my eyes is somehow less valid, less real. But it’s not. She touched my life with her words, her attitude and her outlook, and if that’s not real, I don’t know if anything is.

This makes no sense.