I don't know what to say today. Usually we use words to make sense of things, to impose order on our chaos, to take control of a situation. Words are useless to express the depth of the loss we have experienced in the death of Kim Stine. It is hard enough to lose someone you love, but to lose a child, to lose a young person, especially one so beautiful and gifted, leaves us in a state of unbearable incompleteness.
Time is out of joint and life is out of order.
We feel cheated because we've been robbed of all the good gifts she might have shared with humankind. And we can't even articulate our loss because we don't fully know all she might have done, all she might have been. But let us take our words as far as they will go today. Let us speak of how Kim Stine was a gift to her family and to all those who knew her. Not all of her potential was unrealized, and it would be a mistake for us not to celebrate her life accomplishments today, even though she had only just begun.