Hollie Rae: on finding peace

Heather Warner Smith

October 16th, 1984 - April 9th, 2009

Yesterday Chris Smith buried his wife of five years in the cool, Pocatello ground, just a few miles from here. Yesterday, it snowed and was so cold I didn’t even get out of my pajamas. I felt trivial making our bed, doing the dishes, being normal, realizing that everything in the world of this grieving husband and one year-old child will be different without her.

I pondered all day about the colder things. Death. Loneliness. And all the things that change throughout our lifetimes. I pondered tragedy, and overcoming it, and how time here on earth is either too short, or far too long.

Heather Warner Smith died last Thursday in Boise. She had cancer. She was 24 years old and we grew up in the same Meridian ward, though I don’t remember seeing her since my family moved from Sapphire. I feel sad about that. Especially now. Looking through her pictures, it takes my breath away how beautiful she was.

I held Morgan tight yesterday. And last night, I held Jared even tighter. These two are everything to me. This little life that we share brings so much happiness to me, as a wife and mother. Words, no matter how beautiful or expressive, could ever tell. It’s a beautiful thing, to me, to wake up in the morning and truly feel entirely in the right place. I know that I’m where I’m supposed to be, and I’m grateful to have the spirit enough in my life to confirm that.

It never fails to amaze me how I’m always relearning the basic, beautiful principles of the gospel, and how when that burning is within, those principles seem so new. Pure.

Jared, and Morgan too, are everything I hold dear. And I could tell Jared a million times, but I know he can’t understand, or at least not exactly, the depth of my feelings. I know that these feelings grow deeper as time continues on, and I’m thankful for that. I’m thankful to constantly be learning and growing and feeling new and deeper things. I truly believe this is part of the plan.

I’m thankful we are together here on earth and that the covenants Jared and I made to ourselves and to Heavenly Father in the temple have the power to bind us, as family, with our sweet Morgan together forever. There is nothing more pure, or more beautiful to me. And it’s with Heather’s passing, or Nie and Christian’s struggles, or Ashley’s 26 year-old brother-in-law (I wish I knew his name) passing away in Afghanistan, that I am realizing (once again), that it is truly possible to be together forever. It’s the one thing we can hold to, and sometimes hold to it with all we have.

I have been holding to that. It gives me focus and dispels my personal worries and fears. I hope Chris is holding to it, as he begins healing. I hope that he is finding comfort. Along with Nie, and Christian too. And Ashley’s family. And I hope that within our hearts, whatever our needs, we all find peace. Especially during this beautiful time of year when we focus solely on the one true thing that gives us the hope we all so much need. Jesus Christ’s atonement is the very basis of all. I believe this. I truly do.