Words from others...

We got so many sweet cards, texts and messages but these are a few I didn't physically have to put in her box and wanted them to be recorded.


A portion of a talk given by my Aunt Sherri:
2.)  The next beatitude is “Blessed are they that mourn  for they shall be comforted”.  It is a basic fact of life that we all will face tragedy.  We all will face sadness, death, and sickness in this mortal life.  I think most of you know that I am a Physician Assistant and I work in the Emergency Room.  Because of my occupation I see more tragedy, death and mourning up close than some.  And recently I have had several situations where I have come face to face with raw grief, tragedies that brought me to tears and to prayer when I got home from work; that kept me up at night and had me pondering why such bad things happen to good people.  And even more personally, recently my niece, Misty, whom I am very close to gave birth to a baby who lived only a precious few hours due to a congenital anomaly in which she was born without a brain.  Although baby Olivia lived such a short time, she has had a lasting impact on my niece and on our family as a whole.  As I have mourned with her, cried with her, and prayed for her I have thought about why she had to suffer through such a trial.  Thankfully, my niece has the gospel insight into her tragedy that has carried her through this time and her perspective perfectly explains how we are blessed through mourning.  She was lucky to have an amazing physician who is also LDS.  Shortly after baby Olivia passed, he said to her “You will feel sad at times and as long as you are more happy than sad it is okay, but I hope that it never completely goes away”.  Misty understood what he meant.  She wrote “He doesn’t mean he hopes I am sad for the rest of my life.  He hopes that I will never forget the tender precious emotions I felt that brought me so much closer to my Savior and built my testimony.  I hope I never forget how close to Heaven we felt in that hospital room or the angels we felt and continue to feel surrounding us.  I think of the Atonement and imagine Christ looking me in the eye and feeling my exact pain of losing Olivia.”  I cannot tell you the comfort that reading her perspective on losing Baby Olivia gave to me.  It was through her experience I really came to see that mourning really is a blessing because it opens our hearts, it brings us to our knees so that we can feel the Saviors love and feel the reality of his love.  Elder Robert E Wells explains that the “pain and suffering at the death of a loved one is an essential part of our mortal experience that obliges us to face the question of the reality of the Spirit world and the hope of the Resurrection.  It is through suffering that we discover what is eternally important.  It might also be that it is a blessing to become more fully aware that God’s ways are not always our ways and that we must trust Him when things don’t go as we believe they should.  When we can see the Lords purposes fulfilled in our sorrowful moments, the Holy Ghost can console us and the Atonement and Resurrection can become cornerstones of our faith.”  The mourner is blessed when and if he comes unto Christ.

A poem by Russ' Grandmother, Ellen Thornock:

Words written by my brother after we told him about Olivia:

Olivia 

The selfish part of me is angry….  Angry that I never got to talk to you, to hear you say TanTan and LoLo...  mom and dad... never got to play with you,…. tell you how proud I am of you… tell you how lucky you are to have your parents….. To always remind them of how lucky they are to have you. 

But the better part of me knows that you have a purpose, one that we don’t yet fully understand,… that it is not by chance that you came to this family.  The better part of me knows that you were always meant to be an angel,… that you are looking down on us as we laugh, cry, and make mistakes..... The better part of me knows that an undeniably beautiful and powerful part of you will always be here with us.

When we meet again I hope you can look at me and tell me that you are proud of me,….. that you are proud of all of us.

I want to tell you how beautiful you are.  I want to tell you how much we love you.  I want to tell you how thankful we are for you. 

Thank you Olivia for choosing us,….. thank you for bringing out the better part of me,…. for bringing out the better part of all of us. 

Till we meet again!  

A very sweet text from my sister in law: