Oh how things can change

Hi everybody. oh how things can change..... I am sitting here at 12:22 a.m. knowing that sometime in the last half hour my son has boarded a plane in Iraq and is on his way to a base back in the U.S.A. But I have to tell all of you that this has been a very very hard evening and I am speaking to you with such a heavy heart.

I live in a small town, the same small town that my father, grandfather, myself and so on all grew up in and it might not be the same really little town that I grew up in but for the most part it still has that closeness and such. Well this afternoon my good friend Lisa called and asked me if Frank was home yet. You see she has a scanner and heard that there had been an accident on Hwy. 87, which is the highway that runs thru La Vernia and goes thru San Antonio. She said that the highway had been completely shut down because a big gravel truck had hit another. Well living in a small area you are always afraid of who it is and very prayerful that everyone is ok. Well this time they were not. Our friends Tessie and Colby's son Alex which is 17 had been killed in this horrible accident. Alex was an awesome kid. It will be a very sleepless night, I hurt to the point of almost vomiting for this family. There are just no words. I plead with each of you to please say a prayer for this family. Their other son's name is Hayden and he is in the 6th grade. Tessie just buried her Daddy last week.

CAN I SHARE SOME REALLY PERSONAL THINGS WITH YOU?????

I have had alot of unexpected death in my life. In high school and up to three years after I buried 7 friends. One was lymphoma and the rest were accidents. The hardest of all was my cousin Christopher. We were Kristy Friederick and Christopher Friederick, I was 92 days older than him and we were going to conquer the world together. We were two peas in a pod. I was 18 he was 17 , on a sunday he was working , fell thru a roof, landed head first on the tailgate of a showroom vehicle and in a split second he left me and the world. In August it will be 22 years ago and although the hurt really really eases, it just never goes away. I miss him and think about him every single day of my life.

Then in 1993, on the very day that I laid eyes on my baby Astrud for the very first time , she was 9 months old and my heartbreaking years of infertility had eased up a bit because God had given this beautiful little creature to me through adoption and I felt like my lifes dream had just granted. But you see 3 weeks before that one of my best friends had given birth to her second child Colton. Robin and I had such a special bond, her first child Kelsey was 3 and it had taken Robin 10 years to get pregnant with her, and now we had Colton. We were all family, Kelsey was kind of like my mom and dad's "first" grandchild. Well on this wonderful day as I was meeting my daughter, in the middle of it I get a frantic phone call telling me that Robin had collapsed in the doctors office while trying to get a urine sample from Kelsey because she had been sick. Robin died. She was 26 years old, her and John had been together since jr. high, Kelsey was 3, Colton was 3 weeks old, she had a pulmonary embolism, that killed her instantly, in the locked restroom with Kelsey. On the day of my baby shower, I had to take Robins's clothes to the funeral home.

Back in 2000, my grandfather, both of my grandmothers and an uncle all passed away within 16 weeks of each other. My granny and my grandma died exactly a month apart.

Then the first time Steven went to Iraq , I can't even remember where I went online but I left a comment out there somewhere asking if there were any mothers in the same boat as me and there was. Her name is Kelly and she reached out to me thru email. Her son Robby was a marine and was headed back to Afghanistan for the second time. She kind of tucked me under her wing and protected me and "taught" me the ropes. We kept in touch , she lived in Houston and I really felt a connection to her. Well one week before Steven was due to come home from Iraq after a year, I was having an anxious night , couldn't sleep , so I thought I would get online. I checked my email and she had emailed me to tell me that Robby's unit had been ambushed and that he had been killed. Again I just sat at my computer with no words. So on the day that our entire family went to Waco for the homecoming of 3000 plus soldiers , afterwards Frank and I headed for Houston for Robby's funeral as Steven and everyone else headed home. I can't even begin to explain what "Survivors Guilt" feels like. This woman had been such a godsend to me and here I was in a funeral home less than 24 hours after I had welcomed my son home, as she was burying hers. It's so confusing to be so happy and thankful but sad , oh so sad at the same time.

Just like today as me and the girls were outside taking pictures in front of Stevens sign so all of you could see us being giddy about him coming home, and as I was taking pictures of Astrud, Rayn and Emily doing flips on the trampoline for all of you to see and as I was taking pictures of the "Neighborhood " dog , "Trace" for Pugmama to see because he is huge, Tessa was being told that her son had died in this accident.

You are probably wondering why I am telling you all of this stuff? I don't know maybe it is therapy, maybe I am just sad and all of you are who I want to talk to. I do know that I am grown up enough and my walk with my God is so inspirational that I know better than to think that I am jinxed. I know that with every circumstance there is a lesson to learn, heck your lesson might be to not be my friend, I'd be scared to!!! But even having had all of this I still feel like one of the most blessed people walking on earth. The lesson that I seem to keep learning over and over again is that life is short, never take it for granted, love your loved ones hard, love them everyday, cherish your children, your spouse, your "everybody", and most of all love your God because we never know when he going to take us home. If you are still reading this and have endured all of it , I thank you from the very depths of my heart and soul. I really needed this and you listened. Again please keep Tessa and her family in your prayers. I sincerely wish I knew all of you face to face so I could hug all of you and tell you how each of you have touched my life. God bless.

Love, Kristy