Heather.

This evening, Facebook told me that I hadn't talked to Heather Smith lately and suggested that I should 'reconnect with her'.

It meant something different to me - something other than what it was intended to mean.

Heather Smith passed away in April.

From time to time, I'll click through her pictures. It takes me back - a long while back to my Sapphire home in Meridian when her and Ashley, Amanda, Lizzy and I were boy-crazed Beehive girls. Young, healthy, alive.

People, friends still write to her as if she'll log on again - as if she's right there to reply. It's incredible. Almost surreal, as if I'm reading a story.

It is a story. An amazing one.

:

Heather would have been twenty-five in October.

:

On her birthday, her husband wrote: Happy Birthday Babe! You'll be forever young and forever mine. I miss you a lot, but know you are near. Thank you for everything. Love you!

October 26th 9:32am, her sister wrote: You made me smile today! See you in a while...

In August, a friend wrote: Missing you and thinking of you! I have your Christmas card on my fridge and it helps me to remember daily how fragile our lives on this earth are and helps me to remember the journey I am on and where I want to end up. Love you tons and miss you bunches.

Another sister wrote (about her son): He reminds me so much of you, and i think it's amazing how he will kiss your picture as though he knows more than a small child should.

Note after note, I read through them all.

With a click of a button, I reconnected. Sincerely, I felt an overwhelming sense of love.

I learned and re-learned a few things, and had changes of perspectives. Then I ran to find Morgan and I scooped him up and kissed him and held him. Because I can. Because he's mine. Because it made me feel better.

Because I started to think of myself as her. I thought of motherhood, and how conflicted she must have felt in her heart, knowing her moments were fleeting. How does one heart separate the joy from the pain enough to find peace enough to let go?

And with a husband and a son, how do you really let go? How would you look onward, when what you were leaving behind meant everything?

In my simple mind, grief of such loss seems as though it would overtake me entirely.

Looking at it with eternity in mind changes things. I know in my heart that loss as we know it here, is not really loss at all. We continue beyond the grave and we can all be together again someday. And whatever sorrows we bear within us through this life can be comforted, even healed through our Savior.

Today, I am thankful for The Gospel of Jesus Christ and how it continually changes me - teaches, strengthens me. Gives me certain cause to hope, and shows to me promise of what is to come.