The chapter may be over, but it's still a part of the story....

As I scrawled the date in a rush to write a check yesterday morning, a flood of memories came rushing back. Most years, I can't help but think of my sophomore year of high school when I see the date March 18...... Gordon's class of '95 lost a member that day, I lost a friend and my sense of invincibility. I remember it like it was yesterday, it was a blur then, like we were caught in a whirlwind, knowing full well when the wind died down, life would never be as it was ever again. The sights, sounds, and smells of those days haven't ever left me. It's funny how the brain will hold onto not only the memories, but will release the flood of emotions to go with them. If I stay here, I can be 15 again. Has it really been 16 years? It never occurred to me as I walked thru the days then that anything like that COULD happen, much less that it would. My heart was broken in so many ways, it affected me deeper than I ever made known. I felt betrayed, but I didn't know where to look for the one who'd betrayed me, where to place the blame for the robbery I felt had taken place.



It's like seeing thru two different sets of eyes now, that 15 year old Krista's eyes, and looking back thru the eyes I have now (which don't see nearly as well as they used to, by the way!) I watch my own daughter and can't help but think of Jenny's mom. I can't even go there, to that place where she must have been, to even catch a glimpse of what she was going thru, what she still goes thru on March 18 or November 19....Jenny's birthday. I cannot imagine life without my daughter. The gigantic hole her leaving this earth would leave in my life.



There will never be words to explain well enough to me why tragedies happen, why beautiful people are taken before we're ready to let them go, why everything can change in the blink of an eye, or why it sometimes takes my world being shaken and torn to make me appreciate what I've been blessed with......and it's too late to say how grateful I am sometimes. I truly think the class of '95 was closer after that, we seemed to realize that this life was bigger than our differences, and definately too short to dwell on them.



Overall, I have fond memories of my classmates and my time at Gordon High. I laughed, cried, kicked, and cussed with some really great people, people I'm proud to have known. Regardless of how we felt about each other, it took all of us to make up that class and all the memories, good and bad, that go along with it.