{"id":1547,"date":"2012-01-06T15:29:25","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T15:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/?p=1547"},"modified":"2012-01-07T02:08:55","modified_gmt":"2012-01-07T02:08:55","slug":"its-personal-on-loss-and-frienships-northern-virginia-photographer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/personal\/its-personal-on-loss-and-frienships-northern-virginia-photographer\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s personal, on loss and frienships: Northern Virginia Photographer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I just need to say what’s on my mind and so this post is personal in nature.\u00a0 Something terrible happened four years ago.\u00a0 I still can’t believe it sometimes and I guess that’s just life’s way of easing the pain perhaps.\u00a0 Four years ago I was getting ready for bed here in Virginia when I received a phone call from my brother Joel, who was calling from Washington State where I am from.\u00a0 He said: “Hi Shauna how are you doing?”\u00a0 I replied: “Just fine Joel, what’s going on?”\u00a0 It was unusual for me to receive calls from the west coast that late at night.\u00a0 He replied: “It’s about Kristy Palizzi.”\u00a0 I said it before he did: “She’s dead isn’t she?\u00a0 He killed her.”\u00a0 My brother replied: “How did you know?\u00a0 Did you see it on the news?”\u00a0 Somehow in my heart I already knew what had happened when he said her name.\u00a0 I was shaking and I couldn’t stop shaking because I couldn’t believe she could be dead.\u00a0 Her husband had killed her.\u00a0 It was awful and terrible and he killed her at point blank in the church parking lot early on a Sunday morning on her birthday.\u00a0 And no less, her mother had to stand there and watch it all before her very eyes.\u00a0 No it wasn’t just a few shots he had to shoot her 10 times.\u00a0 It makes me cry when I imagine the scene playing through my mind.\u00a0 How could someone do that?\u00a0 It was and still is incomprehensible to me.<\/p>\n

Kristy and her husband were in the midst of a divorce and it was clear her husband was not happy about it.\u00a0 It is no surprise that she was leaving him.\u00a0 There were obvious reasons why it would never work.\u00a0 And the sad thing is that a lot of us shared the same reservations about her marrying him.\u00a0 I just didn’t have a good feeling about him and neither did some of her family.\u00a0 I really think it’s important to listen to your gut when it’s telling you something just isn’t right.\u00a0 Just don’t ignore it and hope it will disappear.<\/p>\n

Kristy and I were close as teenagers and she was one of my bridesmaids.\u00a0 She was lively and was always fun to be around.\u00a0 She spoke the truth when no one wanted to hear it and she didn’t care.\u00a0 She was bold and beautiful in so many ways.\u00a0 Was she perfect?\u00a0 No and she would never say or pretend that she was, and that is what made her so refreshing.\u00a0 She was genuine, herself, an original, not another like her on earth.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite memories of her was when we went out to eat lunch.\u00a0 Kristy was always working on her physique and the latest diet she was trying was Atkins.\u00a0 At the time I hadn’t heard of Atkins and we were eating at a buffet place.\u00a0 She loaded up her plate with all this meat and it just seemed strange to me as I never thought of her as a big meat eater.\u00a0 I asked her what was up with all the meat.\u00a0 She said: “It’s this new diet I’m trying.\u00a0 You have to eat a lot of protein.\u00a0 It’s called Atkins.\u00a0 I know it seems crazy but it works!”\u00a0 She was enthusiastic about it and it just cracked me up, the thought of losing weight by eating a lot of meat.\u00a0 Somehow it seemed counter intuitive.<\/p>\n

Another one of my favorite memories are about the many times we would get together on Sunday evenings and go over to her house and sing around her piano with her and my friend Honor.\u00a0 Kristy’s voice was so deep and resonant.\u00a0 It was like melted chocolate coming off a fondue fountain.\u00a0 She was just born that way and she was so good she could have been signed by a record label.\u00a0 Her vocal talent was witnessed by many and the good feelings that came from her gift touched many lives including my own.\u00a0 I just feel fortunate that I have video of her singing at my wedding reception.<\/p>\n

As time passed and we both lived in different parts of the world, raising kids and staying busy with life, we weren’t as close as we should have been.\u00a0 Sometimes we let life get in the way and relationships that you cherish can grow weak.\u00a0 I would always hope that our summer visits back to Seattle to see our families would coincide so that we could sing together and catch up on our lives.\u00a0\u00a0 And even now I still think about what it was like to sing together and enjoy that time in our lives.\u00a0 It really was a formative time in my life and I give a lot of credit to Kristy and her mom, Ann for helping me to draw closer to God during that time in my life.<\/p>\n

We all know that life can be cut short too soon.\u00a0 I regret that I won’t have those future days with her that I used to hope for.\u00a0 I so wish we could go back for just one more day and hang out, giggle, snort as she used to do, and sing together.\u00a0 Awww I miss her!<\/p>\n

I love this entry from her mom on Kristy’s memory blog<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\u00a0 Her mom shared: “One year ago tonight I spent a very pleasurable evening with Kristy. We went condo shopping and out to dinner then back to her house. We stayed up late and had a deep thoughtful conversation. We basically bore testimony to each other and Kristy sang a couple of her favorite songs to me. Our last words that evening were words of love and affection, hugs and kisses on the cheek. Only 11 hours later she lay dead in the snow. What a cherished memory for me to look back and know that we had said the things that needed to be said. I have no regrets that I left things unsaid. It brings comfort to my soul.” \u00a0If it’s been a while since you’ve told those you love that you love them, do it TODAY!<\/p>\n

And here is a pic of me and Kristy back in 1998 at my wedding.\u00a0 If I look like a baby, I kind of was.\u00a0 I got married at 20 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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Sometimes I just need to say what’s on my mind and so this post is personal in nature.\u00a0 Something terrible happened four years ago.\u00a0 I still can’t believe it sometimes and I guess that’s just life’s way of easing the pain perhaps.\u00a0 Four years ago I was getting ready for bed here in Virginia when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-personal","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1547"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1551,"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions\/1551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}