Just thinking

This is going to be a generally frank blog post. Just FYI.

So it’s been a year since brave Zoey was here. And I’ve been thinking, but even my little writer brain can’t really think of a good way to present these thoughts, but I still feel like you, my faithful readers and friends, deserve and might even benefit from some of these thoughts, so I’ll just list them as they are:

1.       I literally cannot believe it has already been a year. I am still trying to figure out how I have a year’s worth of very vivid and poignant (sometimes too poignant) memories, conversations, incidences, events, etc., concerning Zoey when I swear she was just here last week.

2.       Worst year of my life, by the way

3.       But mostly I’m just saying that because it’s my first reaction. It really has been an incredible year; for nearly every second of heartbreaking pain (there’s been about 31,536,000 of them), we’ve experienced a lot of amazing realizations and revelations. A lot of confirmations that this is not all for naught.

4.       I would be nothing, nothing, without Billy. He has saved me every single day.

5.       The night before Zoey’s birthday felt like the night before the Pikes Peak Ascent or the Boston Marathon; I was hardly able to believe that the big day was already the next morning, just hours away, and I could look back on all the amazing training runs I’d done, all the conversations with veterans I’d had, all the mental breakthroughs I had and where I was when I had them, and on and on and already the big day was just the next day!? All the work, all those experiences, and it would all be put to test the next day.

6.       The day after Zoey’s birthday was the worst. I did not consciously make this thought process, but somehow my subconscious must have related the reaching of a milestone to a physical, visible progression and it actually tricked me into thinking that somehow the day after the year mark would be new or different, or, even better, old and the way things used to be. You can only imagine that when I woke up and I was still without Zoey and had still had to go to my job and still had a heavy heart and was still just tired and weary and worn down and still grappling with emotions I haven’t figured out yet, that it was a very hard morning to wake up on. Needless to say, I cried a lot and I didn’t go to work.

7.       SO MANY PEOPLE are made of charity in this world. We were blown away by the people who remembered, the ones that knocked on our door at exactly the right moment, and had good words to say. We are so grateful to be surrounded by so many loving, supportive and Christlike people.

8.       Everything felt so much the same. That was/is very hard to endure. The temperature today was the same temperature it was this day last year, this day last year when I had to wrap my chest tight in a huge ace bandage because my body was ready to feed a baby that wasn’t there, this day last year when I went to my daughter’s funeral, this day last year when I couldn’t run in the mountains, this day last year when I wondered what was going to happen. Everything is still so much the same.

9.        Some things have changed. I know Billy a thousand times better than I used to. I am not as bitter as I was in the months following Zoey’s death. I am better at having conversations with people that used to make me bawl my eyes out. When I am still not so good at that, I am better at pretending so they don’t have to know (which I don’t think is necessarily a good thing, but hey.) My hair is longer.

10.   I wonder if years from now I will look back at this entry and these thoughts and think, “What a pathetic little mourner I was. Things weren’t really all that bad. Were they?”

11.   (They were)

12.   I have made so many dear friends that I would not have made if it were not for Zoey. My heart is more tender, more open to conversations, more open to mourn with people. The gospel is all lined up just right, you guys. We covenant to mourn with each other. When we mourn with each other, we become unified. When we are unified, of one heart (a mourning heart, even), we become a Zion people. When we become a Zion people, the Savoir can bring to pass his work and his glory, to help us gain immortality and eternal life. I’ve seen it work this year.

13.   Death, no matter what kind, sets my whole body into “oh man” mode.

14.   Remember how I said I couldn’t believe it’s been a year? Well, now that a few days have passed and I’ve been very contemplative about this whole business (not a new trend, by the way) I find it equally as hard to believe this whole thing didn’t start at least a million years ago. I feel like I’ve been living through this forever.  

15.   I really apologize for not really talking to anyone except Billy and maybe Mom about everything. It’s way harder than you think, but I hope you all know I’m not not talking to you because I don’t want you to know. On the contrary, if there was any way I could show you some of the things we’ve learned and spare you the actual experience, I would do it. But I think it takes time, so thank you for just being patient and tender with me. 

16.   Several times this year I have thought and even said out loud to people that I didn’t think the gospel was that swell of a crutch or I didn’t really feel like Heavenly Father was really helping me or things like that. Now that I’ve made it to the year mark and I can look back on everything, I can testify that Heavenly Father has been with me every step of the way, and we would not have made it even this far without his constant watch and love. So silly and prideful of me to think otherwise, but you’d be surprised the thoughts you can have when you are just in the depths.

17.   I know a year isn’t very long. These are just my thoughts today and right now. Who knows what happens from here? Mom does, I guess. She is a champ.

18.   Bottom line, you guys, we miss Zoey. We never loved anyone so much! We are so sad. Having her here was so great, even though it was a time wrought with fear and anxiety and wonderings and fatigue. We miss that little girl more than anything and pray for her all the time.

And that’s all for today. Onward, I suppose. I’m not the same Krista I used to be, but it’s ok. I married a different Billy than the Billy I dated because grief and loss changes a person, but we are making it and we are grateful for the gospel.  Thanks for reading a tiny portion of the frankness of my soul.