Kristy: "I’m sitting there on this trailer and my sister thought I was joking, but I had a massive seizure... she realized I wasn’t joking. She yelled at everyone to come over... When I had my seizure, I actually quit breathing. Everything stopped. I was gone."

Dave: "You... you had died."

Kristy: "Yeah."

“The Son of man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he."

Even as a child, that scripture had an effect on me. As an adult, it has a huge effect on me. The trials and experiences that I've had in my life have affected me for good. I know that to be the case. Even though seventh and eighth grade was the worst two years of my life, I can tell you that I have had many, many fantastic years since then, and even before that time as well. Being blessed with being able to get home from kindergarten and not being kidnapped by people who would just put me in the car and take me wherever, that is a huge blessing.

Him and I had talked about that story before he was in the hospital for the last time. It kind of to me is Ken's essence because he is very open-minded and he does look at things from a lot of different perspectives and views. Like you said, even in that last hospital stay, he was up and down and up and down. And that was quite a bit of the last part of our marriage was this up-and-down type of thing. It was scary to wonder what's going to happen. So I think it was his way of trying to have a sense of peace... of, we don't know what's going to come from this. It could be good. It could be bad.

We always ask ourselves, 'What could I have done differently? Is there something I could have done to prevent any sort of tragedy?' I remember the Saturday before my dad died—it was a two-hour drive to go check out some land for a cabin. That was my last time with him. When I got out of his pickup, I just said, 'See you later.' I didn't know that was the last time I was going to see him.

I’m not the kind of person that’s going to tell you to cherish every moment because 'death happens all the time.' We all know that. But I can tell you that when you've lost a father and two brothers in just a few years, you and your surviving siblings start looking at each other and asking: Who’s next? How do you survive that? For me, it’s about a mental 'work-around.' It’s about my faith, yes, but it’s also about the grueling, minute-by-minute work of controlling my thoughts—crumpling up the sadness like a piece of paper and throwing it away, over and over, until I can breathe again.