If it were you?

If your child passed away at night from complications due to Type 1 Diabetes, how would you want the Diabetes Online Community to react?

Would you want them to ignore it?  Pretend it never happened?  Use denial to squash away the memory of your beloved?

Would you want your child’s face plastered over everyone’s wall declaring the monster that T1D is? 

Would you want warnings, and scoldings, and “I told you so’s” like billboards on a highway with your precious as the poster child?

Would you want anger attached?  Sarcasm attached?  Indifference?  Would you want judging and speculation? 

What would you want?

The way the online community commemorated and embraced Ryan’s passing was a beautiful thing.  It wreaks me to think that was only because he had cancer.  What if my husband had passed away from Type 1 Diabetes?  Would the fear of it happening in your own lives have changed your reaction?  Would the support have filtered away into the fog of fear?

Would the fear have made you angry?  Would it have made you furious that people were embracing a soul they never met?  Would you have had to take a break from Facebook?

I don’t know the answer to any of this.  I don’t think any of us know how we'll react to anything until we are face to face with it.

What I do know is a child is no longer with us.

A family is hurting.

Real people have faced their worst nightmare and are seeing this nightmare float around online. 

I just hope that if we post about it, we would post as if the mother were reading it.  Post as if the father had eyes on what we write.

Post with care.  And love.

Because even though we never met this child, she is one of our own.  That is what “community” is all about.

What if it were your child?

What would you want?

Do that.

And #SingForNicole