Five years ago this weekend my foster daughter of 12 years died suddenly. She had C.P. and a seizure disorder. I have been doing EMDR around my guilt, feeling like if I took better care of her she would still be alive. Illogical but my whole pattern is if I could do something well enough I could stop bad things from happening. I think the EMDR is helping. So from a grief prospective I will say that I feel that due to her disability she was marginalized as a person. People barely noticed or reached out to us when she died. In addition her birth family is catholic, I am so not catholic that when the preist said something about how she wasn't suffering and was at peace I almost jumped out of the pew to choke him. Sorry to all catholics here. I mean no offense but he didn't know her and just because she had a disability he thinks she was suffering? No words about who she really was. I craved stories about her. Sought them out. Made people write them on cards and made up two memorial books with pictures and words, one for us, one for her birth family. I wanted to hear her story and so few people even kinew she existed they couldn't tell it. People who were our friends avoided us because they didn't know how to deal with it. What do you say to someone when their severely disabled foster daughter dies ?How about I am so sorry. My girls were 11 when she died. I carried my baby in my belly as I carried my foster daughter in my arms. I fed her breakfast and sent her off to school and had my baby 5 minutes later. We adopted one of the girls at 3 1/2, our son was not yet three when she came to be with us so all of the kids have no memories of life before our loved one died. There is still alot of pain attached to the memories of how she passed and not being there. Not getting to bury her my way. Feeling like I should have been there, I could have saved her. The EMDR is helping. It is a long story indeed but think of me, and the rest of my tribe as the 10th approaches. I took good care of her. I loved her. She loved us. She was happy with us.