Road Side Attraction

I am still trying to figure out which way is up after losing my precious student on Monday. Each day has gotten a little easier, or at least a little easier to pretend. I am not sleeping well at night because it is then when everything is still and silent that I can not keep the thoughts away. Guilt is a terrible and horrible thing. This little one required a lot of individualized and constant care to keep her safe at school and to meet her health needs. I can easily remember on days when she was absent almost feeling relieved because it meant that we could better meet the needs of all of the kids and not have to worry about if we could keep her safe that day. Now I am feeling terribly, horribly, awfully guilty for ever being thankful that she was not at school because she is never going to be at school again. I feel like I am taking the easy road by not attenind her funeral bt it is in another state that is a 4 hour drive away and I simply can not afford to go.
At school everyone has been supportive. I have had teachers that I can only recognize as failiar to the school come up to me to offer condolences and support any way possible. One of the special education teachers even offered to take my class for a while on Wednesday if it got to be too much for me. I am so appreciative, but it is weird too because there is an underlying current. People seem to stare a little longer in the hallways. There is a sense of relief that it was not them and almost a desire to stare to see what it is like. It is sort of like when you drive past a horrendous accident on the expressway, you first thank the Lord that it was not you but then some instinct compels you to want to stare and gawk as you pass. I am the accident on the side of the expressway, I am the roadside attraction. I feel like I am a case study of some sort and everything I do or say is being noted. Ugh! The support is wonderful but suddenly having all eyes on you is creepy.
The school has been helpful as well in trying to support the family. The school helped me to obtain a yearbook, which my children placed their thumbprints in on the signature page and in which all of us who worked with her wrote notes about her. They also arranged to send flowers to the funeral home. The special education team raised enough money to send a significant amoutn of money on a gas card and a separate american express card to assist with travel expenses and other expenses. I also know that the preschool and Child Find groups are raising money as well and so I may be able to send even more to the family.
I still have no words to justify, to explain, to comprehend how five years can ever be the sum of a lifetime. I will never understand the justice in a child being born with so much against her, to know so much pain and suffering, to die so young. I will never understand why, it will never make sense, and I will never believe that she and her family were "chosen" for this. No God I believe in selects people for great suffering and bestows upon them agony. Our world sucks, things that are horrific and unjust and painful and devestating things happen. I do believe that she is finally free of tubes, of braces, of equipment and treatments that she hated. It just hurts being left behind with the questions and nothng but memories.