Christi

22 Apr 2000 - Christi
My Mom and Dad are grandparents to 20 children. (Since that was written they now have 28 grandchildren) Some of these “children” are 40 years old. And some of them, 5 to be exact, are great-grandchildren. These grandchildren started being born when I was 4 years old and one was born 4 months ago. I don’t know how many more there may be.
When I was 5 years old my sister Debbie had her second child, Christi. Christi was sweet from infancy.
Jon and I loved visitors as children. We lived down a long dusty driveway. Christi told me that she could remember being a very small child and seeing us run outside when they pulled in the driveway. And the entire time they would be driving down the driveway Jon and I would be jumping up and down excited that they were coming. Christi said she always felt so wanted when she came to visit there.
Christi was a good student in school. She never went through that teenage rebellion that is so common. And she was very pretty. She was very popular in school. All the boys wanted to go out with her. But she would only go out with boys that her parents approved of.
She decided as a teenager that she wanted to be a missionary. Her sister, Andrea, was planning on studying fashion design. So we teased that Andrea would send Christi hand-me-down clothes. And that she, in darkest Africa, would be the best dressed missionary in the world.
After high school she followed her sister to college. They lived in the same dorm. When they came home for Christmas Christi seemed different. Not in a bad way, she talked a little slower, and would really look into your eyes when she talked to you. And whereas her faith had always been very important to her and it had always been a normal topic of conversation in my family, during Christmas break that is all she would talk about. She never veered from the subject of her Bible studies and what new she had learned. But it really didn’t bother anyone too much. It wasn’t that odd. After New Year’s she returned to school. I didn’t think any more about the change in her until in April she went berserk in her dorm. From what I understand she was crying uncontrollably, walking through the dorm halls knocking on doors. She seemed to be afraid and warning the others of something. But she really wasn’t very coherent. That night her Mom and Dad had to go get her. She spent several months in a ward for people with mental problems. The doctors all agreed that it was some sort of chemical imbalance, but they tried medicine after medicine with little results.
That started a pattern. She would be in the hospital for awhile, get a little better, come home, seem like she was getting better only to crash unexpectedly, and have to be returned to the hospital. Certain medicines would work very well for a time then seem to stop being effective.
There were countless ups and downs for 5 years. Sometimes she would seem to be very close to being her old self again. But it never lasted. Then she tried another medicine. It didn’t do any big change; it was very subtle, almost unnoticeable. If just seemed that slowly she was coming out of it. Each step to normalcy, although small, seemed enormous to us. We had all given up on her having a “normal” life. At best we thought she would be home with her parents forever. We never expected she could go back to school. I know that I ever knew the name of that drug. But I do remember reading near that time that when you took certain “anti-psychotic” drugs antihistamines could cause a reaction.
Well Christi continued to get better and better. She did the “impossible” she went back to college. She was only taking 3 classes, but felt like by the next year she would be back in full time. The college had a doctor on staff. If one of the students got sick they could go there and be treated as part of the tuition. Christi got a cold and went to this doctor. He gave her an antihistamine. I don’t know if Christi told him about her medicine and he didn’t pay attention or if for some reason Christi forgot to tell him. But she took her antihistamine. That night in her little dorm room after 5 years of fighting what looked like a losing battle, and seemingly winning, she took all of her pills. She wrote a short little note. Something along the line of “I know what I am doing tonight is permanent. But I can’t live like this anymore. I love y’all”. She lay down on her bed in the same position she always slept in, on her tummy. When she was found the next morning she had been dead for 8 hours or so. I will always believe it was the mixture of the medicine that put her in that state of mind.
I was really worried about her parents. But God held them up. They were such an example. I know of nothing worse than losing a child. And if God can hold a parent up at a time like that He can hold any of us up under any circumstances.
We all still miss Christi. She was such a sweet caring girl. I know though that she was a Christian and I’ll see her someday.