1979 – 2013
I wake in a morning fog and greet another day. I feel doom, but don’t know what it is. Just doom lurking. My mind darts from side to side, hopping and skipping away, front and back I run, but I cannot hide from doom. Slowly, I remember.
She is gone. She is gone. She is gone.
I fall silent. I have no words to understand, the unbelievable, the unimaginable, the unspeakable. Yet, silence is too harsh a sentence for our girl, who glowed with happiness.
The space in our hearts fills with memories in every role: daughter, sister, granddaughter, niece, cousin, and loving aunt. In an apple orchard under an altar of yellow roses, she grew into wife, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law and in years following, mother.
We knew her has an outspoken child, full of self-confidence to run through the house in a towel and finding her stage in the living room to yell…TA DA! We knew her singing at church and in the school choir, running track, hitting the ball, laughing with friends. We knew her on granddad and granny’s farm, 4-H, Future Farmers. as a sleepy huntress in the field, a cook in her mother’s kitchen, then with flirtatious eyes for only one.
The old dog and I sit on granny’s outside swing, back and forth, back and forth. The sky is powder blue and the clouds large and fluffy. A most beautiful day. I spy her walking away on the grassy strip between Greg’s beans. The cicadas whisper –I am not done with you, I am not ready. But, she walks on towards the river bluff where two happy figures beckon her onward. The breeze blows the beans to and fro.
She is gone. She is gone. She is gone.
My niece by marriage, the incredible Krista September 22, 2013
