Realizations

I hope nobody is offended by this post.  If you are, I'm sorry.  I'm not trying to be insensitive, and I hope you don't see it that way.

So, as most readers of this blog already know, three girls were hit by a train yesterday in Spanish Fork.  Kelsea and Savannah Webster, ages 15 and 13, and their friend Essa, also 15, were taking pictures by the railroad tracks and somehow got caught between two trains going in opposite directions.  They were blown by the slipstream into the trains, and Kelsea and Essa were killed instantly.  Savanna is in critical condition.

I first met Kelsea and Savannah when I was twelve and I came over to babysit them, along with their older and younger sisters.  I babysat them periodically for a year or two until their older sister was old enough to take care of them herself.  Since then, they've followed me in young women's, come over to our house for many family game nights and activities, and have joined our family at school events and church activities.

They were our neighbors for about a year, and Savannah and their littlest sister would walk up the hill with Tess and Levi from the bus stop.  I've seen the Websters as almost equivalent to cousins for our family.

A couple of months ago, Savannah and Kelsea moved out to Utah to stay with their aunt and father while their mom tried to find a different job so she could move and have all of the girls with her again.  I remember hugging them good-bye after church on their last Sunday in Sonora, and joking that I didn't know when we would see each other again, but it had better be soon.  

Last night mom called me and told me, more or less calmly, that Kelsea Webster had died.  I felt like I had been sucker-punched.  My only possibly response was to ask how.  

After a good hour or two of crying and breakfast this morning with the only other girl from our ward at BYU, I was still having a bit of a rough time with the whole idea.  How could this have happened?  How must their family feel?  Wasn't there anything I could do to help?

This evening, the story came on the news and my roommate came and got me so I could see it.  It was hard to look at their faces on the TV screen and know that Kelsea won't be around to give me an exuberant hug or favor the room with her fake sarcastic girly laugh.  I didn't even know how Savanna was, or whether, if she survived, she could ever be the same.  

As I walked out of the room halfway through the newscast, I was still trying to get a handle on the whole thing.  It's okay, I assured myself, it's not like they're dead.  

That mental statement caught my attention as I reminded myself that Kelsea and Essa are, in fact, dead.  But then I realized what my subconscious was telling me, reminding me of something my mind has always known but my heart hadn't quite acknowledged - they're still there.  I will meet Kelsea again, and she still has potential, a life, a future.  We're just going to be missing out on her company for a while.

It is harder to face than an extended leave, I know.  We humans have a hard time trying to comprehend even a year into the future, let alone eternity.  The time of separation will seem like forever.  But that's not what's important - the important thing is that it's only a separation.  They're not gone, not - for lack of a better word - dead.  Kelsea and Essa still exist.  They still know the inside jokes we had, they still know us just as well as they did, and they still care for us just as much as they always have.

I'm so grateful to heavenly father for helping me to come to this realization at this time.  I know it won't be easy dealing with their deaths, but it gives me hope to think that it's not a permanent separation, and their chance at life isn't over.  We didn't have the chance to say good-bye, but we will have the chance to say hello again.

<3

Eliza