The Year of Firsts

The year of “firsts” is now over. The big “firsts”… first birthday, first Christmas, first summer without her, and some of the unexpected firsts, the ones that just keep coming, the ones that wear your soul down… the first time I didn’t set her place at the table for a family dinner, the first time I ventured out in public as the woman who had lost a child and the first time I answered “one” when asked how many children I have.

One of the big “firsts” is about to become a second. Next month we will celebrate Kirsten’s birthday without her for the second time. Last year we celebrated her birthday just over a month after her passing. It was as nice a party as it could be without her actually being there.

All of our family and friends were there, and all of Kirsten’s friends, even a couple of the Shippensburg friends. I baked a chocolate cake with chocolate icing and put a number 1 candle and a number 9 candle on it. I wanted to make the cake myself, it was a motherly duty I could still do for her. There were beautiful flower arrangements, so kindly sent to us for the occasion and Kirsten’s friends decorated the house with pink and blue streamers.


The food was from one of Kirsten’s  favorite places, Royal Bakery. There were two 5 foot subs and assorted pastries. When I picked up the food, I took a picture of the heart and initials that Kirsten had drawn on the wall behind one of the booths. Others had added notes to it since the accident. The new management has since painted over it.

After we ate, all of the people who had gotten a tattoo in Kirsten’s honor gathered outside for a picture. There were 12 of us. There are several other people with Kirsten tattoos that aren’t in the picture. When I’m afraid that her friends will one day forget her, I think of those tattoos.

We sang Happy Birthday and blew out the candles. That was when I lost it. I hid my face against Kenny’s shoulder and sobbed. Everything about this was just SO WRONG.

Then we went out back and released about 50 pink balloons with handwritten messages on them. They floated up toward a bright blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds. Mine said, “Happy Birthday, Kiki. I love you, Mom :-) 


It was a perfect spring day and the sight of all those balloons drifting away from the people who had been holding them was very moving. As the balloons passed the treetops, escaping our grasps forever, I noticed Kirsten’s friend, Cami, start to cry.

A Morning Like No Other

One year today...it hardly seems possible.


It was a morning unlike any other, peculiar from the start, with unexpected snowfall covering the ground following a warm, early spring day. I noticed the note while I was still confused about the snow; a yellow sticky note stuck to the kitchen counter that read,

“ Mom/Dad, going over to Amy’s house. She lives off Hawkins Creamery Road. Just wanted to let you know. Love, Kikibird”

This came as a surprise, too, as Kirsten was in pajamas when Kenny and I went to bed around 11pm and I didn’t know she had gone out.  After getting my coffee, I went back upstairs to finish getting ready for work. I dried my hair and did my make-up, glancing occasionally at the news on the TV reflected from the bedroom onto the bathroom mirror. I had my black scrub bottoms on and a white tank top; the black floral scrub top needed a little ironing so I took it to the laundry room to iron it.

The doorbell rang around seven fifteen. My heart stopped when I saw the tan and black of two police officer’s uniforms, a man’s and a solemn looking woman’s, through the glass on each side of the front door. As I came down the steps, scrub top and the towel I was using as an ironing board still in hand, my mind raced into overdrive, panic stricken…”don’t open the door!” “God, please let her be in the hospital!”  I knew from experience what police officers on your doorstep meant. I was seventeen when I opened the door to police officers at three in the morning on another early March morning long ago to be informed that my twenty-two year old brother, John, had fallen to his death from the top of the trunk of a car driven by friends down Wisconsin Avenue after an evening in Georgetown.

And I knew it was Kirsten. I knew Michelle was in bed and Kenny was at work and I had just read the note on the kitchen counter. My worst fears were realized when the policeman said that they were investigating an accident at Rt. 27 near Brink Road and asked me if I owned a red Honda Civic… if I had a daughter named Kirsten who went to Shippensburg University. The officer explained that there was black ice, she had lost control of the car, gone into the other lane and had been hit by a Ford Explorer coming from the other direction at five o’clock that morning. And then the worst words I have ever heard, the ones I am constantly chasing from my mind, the words that pop into my head at random times of the day, when I look at pictures and when I lay in bed at night…”she was pronounced dead at the scene.” My reaction brought Michelle downstairs and the officer encouraged me to sit down. Together we sat, stunned, in the living room.

My mind went back to the images in the bathroom mirror and sorted through them until it found them…I had seen it without knowing it…the red car in the darkness, lit up by a news helicopter’s spotlight…the banner at the bottom of the screen reading, “Fatal accident in Germantown.”

The male officer gave me his business card and explained to me that I would need to contact a funeral home, the words “funeral home” making me feel sick to my stomach. They prepared to leave, but I wouldn’t let them give me news like that and just walk away. I led them into the kitchen and, through my tears, pointed at Kirsten’s big, beautiful senior picture over the mantel. I think I wanted to inflict a little of my pain on them. I wanted them to be able to put a face to the name. To make them see what a loss it was, not only to us, but also to the world.

I went back upstairs, Michelle trailing behind me, crawled back in bed, and that was how my life, as I knew it, ended.