Didine

I feel like I could in no way write anything that would do justice to Didine's life, personality and spirit, so I still don't have much to say about it. But Kevin wrote me a really nice email last night about Didine that I'm going to repost.

"Haiti has shown you the extreme sides of this life. The worst of man and the best. The innocent and the righteous opposed to the wicked and the damned. I can tell you without a doubt that Didine was a glimmer of hope in this world of ours. I only met her for a week, as well as a short conversation of her yelling at me on the phone when I got home, but I knew without a doubt she was amazing. She was graceful but hilarious. She was strong but fragile. She was everything a four year old shouldn't have to be, but she accepted her life and made it hers. She had...has... an incredible spirit, and for what she had been through, to go the way she did with her family, is the way she would have wanted. You said it yourself. She was where she needed to be, and for a life full of tragedy, that's a pretty amazing thing to have had happened. You and Ivy only made her life better. She loved you both. She loved you completely and endlessly as only a child can, and you both showed her nothing but the same. I'm so grateful to have witnessed how the human spirit can endure even under the most guttural of conditions, and I'm so proud of you for showing the best of us all. Dani, you truly made a difference in someone's life. Not someone's life, but Didine's life. She was herself around you and Ivy. She let you both in, when the world only taught her to raise every possible defense. She was still willing to trust you both, and God was she a beautiful little girl. She even made a hell of an impact on me. She is without a doubt my most vivid memory of Haiti, and she will always make me smile.

So eat a cupcake and smile, because that was Didine. A big, messy, loud, beautiful smile."