Abigail Taylor died yesterday.

I don't know this little girl or her family, but her story has bothered me from the first. Maybe it's because once upon a time I was a lifeguard and, I kid you not, I left work every day thankful that nothing major had gone wrong on my shift. (When I was 9, I witnessed a fairly horrific accident when another kid fell off the high diving board and landed on the cement instead of in the water. It's not an exaggeration to say that I thought of that accident every day when I went to work.) Maybe it's because my kids and I pretty much live at the pool in the summer, and I could too easily imagine this happening to one of them. Or maybe it's just because this was an absolutely horrific accident and you'd have to be awfully cold to not feel something for the poor kid. Whatever the reason, when the news broke last summer I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach.

I really wanted this to somehow be OK, even though it probably wasn't going to be. When they announced the transplant, I was cheering for her. She had a long, hard road ahead of her and the odds weren't great, but she'd already survived more than a lot of other people might have. Maybe she was actually going to be all right.

When I read about the cancer a few Sunday papers ago, I looked at Pete and said, blankly, "She's not going to make it, is she."

I am so, so sorry to be right.