We met in Lamaze class on the first day. Her husband Scott wore a Steelers shirt and, in his introduction, professed his undying love for Pittsburgh's professional football team, so, of course, I had to talk to him. He introduced his wife, Krista.
She and I gave birth two days apart. We were still in the hospital when Scott and Krista arrived in delivery. We didn't know how things had gone until a week later when the visiting nurse arrived at my house. I was still in my pajamas in the late afternoon, tired, sweaty, hair mussed. I inquired as to whether or not she knew the family, and the nurse gleefully told me she'd just come from there. Krista had been bathed, dressed, and wearing make-up.
I hated her.
Only later, did I learn the truth.
Krista had hysterically begged her husband to come home so she could present
herself as a woman fit to be a mother. It was the first shower she’d had since
arriving home with her newborn.
We became fast friends.
Recently, in a conversation with
another friend, I mentioned how this COVID quarantine wasn't much different
from my norm. I stayed home after my first daughter was born and have been
alone at home since then. Only, thinking back I realized that wasn’t entirely
true because I’d had Krista. The two of us spent those first years of
motherhood side by side. If we weren't physically together, we were on the
phone, and sometimes we did both.
I made a note to check in with her. I never got the chance.
Yesterday, Krista had a heart attack. She died. She was my age.
Even now, I grapple with the news. Krista
was larger than life. Full of energy and laugher, she’d enter a room full of
strangers and leave with everyone's numbers on her phone. My dad always said,
like him, Krista never met a stranger she didn't know. It's unimaginable to
think that light has been extinguished.
I'll miss her stories. God, she had
stories! She was the best storyteller with incredulous, entertaining tales told
with the right inflection and humor or sarcasm that always left us with aching
sides. A few of her stories have been retold on this blog over the years. Even
now, I can hear her voice and her laughter after she’d one of her tales.
Family was her number one, but pictures
came second. She always had a camera in the diaper bag, in her purse, in the
car. Every single event in life was documented through her lens, and if you
were with her, you’d get copies. I have many hard copies—later digital pictures--of
our times together. Photographs adorned her entire home—on the refrigerator, on
the mirrors, on her shelve--and when she ran out of wall space, the joke was
she built another room.
She loved passing down family traditions
almost as much as she did making new ones--pumpkin carving at Halloween, number
candles on the birthday cakes--and every holiday she decorated with a mixture
of her past and her present. She was the one who kept our Lamaze group
get-togethers going, documenting every moment with her camera.
We shared quite a bit. Krist held me together when my father died. I kept her sane when she was bedridden during pregnancy. We spent 9/11 together, glued to our television, our husbands out of town. We celebrated birthdays, and recently, our kids' graduations. We navigated motherhood together, through the good, the bad, and the ugly, talking everything to death, and while we didn't always agree, we listened to one another's side.
Life had us moving in separate
directions as the girls grew but we kept trying. We vacationed together--Pompano
Beach, Disney World, North Carolina. Those trips were full of crazy antics,
much laughter, and a lot of great conversations, not to mention stories. They are
well documented on this blog. Our group never had a dull moment!
For the past decade, we spent the football season together. Krista
and Scott had me over to watch the Steelers play, and catching up with Krista was
just as important as the game. No matter how many months we’ve been apart, we’d
always pick up right where we’d left things. We used to say we remained friends
because we knew too much about one another--that we knew where the bodies were
hidden.
Krista is in every room of our home. In the master bedroom
she helped me remove and replace wall border. My husband didn’t believe we
could accomplish the project without him. We petered out in the corner above
the door, so close to finishing, but we agreed to stop, figuring Tom would never
even notice.
In bedroom number three, she caught me on a step stool when
I was nine months pregnant, putting stickers on the baby's fan. She lectured me
until I got down, and I decorated the bookshelves instead. Several weeks later,
she would miscarry her own pregnancy only days before I would give birth to
Darcy. I hesitated to call her with the news, but I shouldn't have worried. She
heard the baby in the background, and her screams of joy made me cry.
Her favorite memories took place in my kitchen. She loved
to tell the story of her daughter Brianna hanging on to my husband's pants leg,
her neck stretched to her back, to exclaim, "Tom, you're as tall as a
tree!" Or the time after Madison's first birthday when my dad laughed so
hard at the two girls feeding themselves spaghetti, the sauce getting all over
their faces instead of in their mouths.
In my Steelers room is memorabilia she gave me when I told
her of my plan to convert the playroom. At my front door, is the storm door Krista
convinced me to get, and in my dining room is the picture she snapped of our
two girls on the beach that we swore would’ve worn photography contests had she
only entered. This morning, it was the first thing I saw when I filled my water
glass.
I'm dazed,
stunned, going from denial to rage to sadness. Krista had been on my mind this
past week. There had been a Facebook response where she'd told me she'd missed
me. Then the realization I mentioned above, and even that very morning, before
Scott called with the terrible news, I had brought her up in a conversation
with the girls.
Krista believed wholeheartedly that those who’d
died before us watched over us. We talked a lot about feeling their presence,
and we both agreed we'd do the same when our turn came. We had an agreement to
watch over each other’s family. Yesterday, without warning, Krista reminded me
of that promise.
No worries, dear friend. I have your back, and I
welcome your haunts.
I will miss you dearly.
