RIP James Kim

Maybe it's the season. Maybe that's why I'm teary.

Maybe it's the pictures the newspapers and news sites ran and the waiting and the hopes that everyone who knew the story had and that he was a local guy and we had that local connection and a bump in hope when mom and daughters were rescued while the search went on for the husband/dad who had trekked off for help.

He was found today and something about it all tears my heart to shreds.

Maybe because Dad's bday was yesterday and this is the first bday we've had without him. Maybe because Skip's bday is in a few days and I've never got through a December without tears since he died. Maybe because it's December and dammit this shouldn't happen.

But it does.

My heart goes out to the Kim family, his dad, his wife, his kids, his family, everyone who loved him.

This is not what any of us wanted to happen. We were all hoping against hope for days that the story would have a happy ending. A team of searchers spent all their energies in the end for naught except that they found his body and ... closure.

The daughters will learn some day that their dad died looking for help for them and their mom and slogged on bravely with more courage than I think I would have had, through hunger and cold and pain and impossible conditions, bravely.

I am just so very sorry that he won't be with them.