Heather

Today I am stealing this post from my daughters blog. My niece passed away 2 years ago on September 7th. My daughter was very close to her. I know I have posted about her before, but I couldnt let the anniversary of her death go by without mentioning it. She is missed every day.

 

2 Years Ago… (Wicked Depressing Post Alert)

September 7, 2012 By Krista 5 Comments

I don’t often get very deep here, but today I am.
I had a cousin who I was close to, we were born 12 days apart and we spent most of our early years together, most of my really early memories involve Heather in some way. We fought like twins and were best friends. We had some matching outfits and our moms got us together all the time. I remember being in my parent’s kitchen around Christmas when we were really little and we must have been making cookies and singing Jingle Bell Rock. And my parents have a very funny home video of us hitting each other with this inflatable alligator thing in my blow up pool.
In January of 2010 she was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL), I was living in WA and Boris was deployed. She got this cancer from benzene under the floorboards in the house she grew up in. Around the time we were 7 there was some family stuff and we didn’t spend a lot of time together again until we were about 11 or 12. And whenever we got together we’d have a blast. We would do each other’s make up. I remember we one time used this dark eyeliner I had as lip liner with my MAC prrr lipglass. It was a cool look back then.
Heather had a beautiful singing voice, and so does my mother, which is a gene I didn’t inherit.
I’ve heard from a couple of family members that the outlook of her cancer was never very good.
Since I was a stay at home wife with a deployed husband and she was stuck in the hospital we talked a lot, on facebook, on skype, whatever.
She was such a fighter. She fought so hard.

The reason this is in the past tense is because 2 years ago today she passed away. I was about 21 weeks pregnant and had found out about a week and a half before hand that I was having a girl. My mom asked me not to tell thefamily because she wanted to surprise everyone with my invitations or something. I told Heather though, and I told her that I really liked the name Karina. (Even though it took a couple of weeks for Boris to warm up to it). I didn’t know that would be the last time we talked.
But it was. She got very sick with a lung infection and slipped into a coma and passed away. I knew she wasn’t doing well and I saw a lot of stuff on her Facebook page that day, but didn’t realize that she was in a coma or how sick she was.
My parents were away, and I was getting most of my news from them but phone calls weren’t happening since they were out of the country, so I got an email from my dad that said “Heather passed away.” My first thought was that someone must have gotten confused and given him wrong information, so I called my brother. He was really upset and I knew it had to be true. I had to know what happened so I called my grandmother and she told me exactly what happened. I am the type of person who needs to know details or something isn’t real.
She was barely 22 when she passed away. She was seriously one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever known. Inside and out. Sometimes life isn’t fair and the most vivacious people are taken too soon, and my cousin Heather is a perfect example of this.
I don’t really know how to end this. But I’m out of things to say.