Ms. Krista Klassy Lynn Brown

What to say about my beautiful loving daughter Krista, her life was short but her story is not.Krista was my miracle baby, when I was 23, I was told that I would never have kids. So ten years later its no wonder that I was six months along before I knew I was pregnant. Easy pregnancy, 3 months and it was over. I wish the delivery was as easy, it was 23 hrs and 10 of that was hard labor.From the start she was wide awake, for hours just looking and listening.It was just the two of us for the first year or so, well besides my family who all spoiled her because there hadn't been a baby in the family for several years. Dave was the man Krista considered her dad, she was about 18 mo when we moved in with him. He was a very good father to her, easy going, loving, patient. We were a close family right off, I didn't work the first 4 yrs of Krista's life and Dave was an artist, a master wood worker and worked out of a shop in our backyard. He and my brother even built Krista a playhouse that matched his shop. We used to spend a lot of time hiking in the desert and selling at the local swap meet, where Krista was everyone's little friend, she was always getting presents from everybody there. Krista made friends easily, whether adult or child. She was a talker, a teller of tales, when she was little, She used to get the biggest kick out of making something up just to see someone panic. She is the only 4 yr old that I ever heard of that tried to fake out the tooth fairy.I remember her Kindergarten teacher asking if Krista's brother could bring in some exotic baby animal that she had told the teacher we had, she described the birth and a lot of other exotic pets we had along with 5 older brothers she had. Her teacher was shocked to find out she was an only child. It was hard not to believe her because of the detail and that she never forgot anything she ever said about her imaginary family and pets. Dave and I enjoyed helping out in her classroom, I remember when they were reading the Gingerbread man we made little flour footprints all around the school (even thru the principles office) for the kids to follow as they chased him and when they caught him we baked and ate him. Krista loved school, she was pretty much an A student all through grade and Jr high school. She had a lot of friends and once you were her friend you were her friend for life.Krista was always trying to make sure everyone else was happy, in fact she was one of the youngest peer mediators in school. Krista was also a Girl Scout for many years we had a lot of fun and went lots of places.Krista also went to Chauncey's Horse summer camp for years with Cassie and Brittany.Krista also had a love of animals, her first pet was a gerbil that somehow turned into 10, that lived in this elaborate tunneled condo in her room, that is until she decided they should live free in our house. She got her first puppy when she was 3, she loved the movie Fox and the Hound, and wanted a puppy named Copper. So I had to look all over for a copper colored dog to fit the name. Copper was a good dog she and Krista were very close, except that she had very large litters, like 10-15 pups at a time,and we always ended up keeping 1 or 2. In fact we still have her granddaughter Margo and great grandson Rags. I'm not sure when the cats came in but seems like there has always been at least one around. She has also had a turtle, couple of ducks, lizards, ferrets, a snake, an occasional baby bunny or squirrel to bottle feed, a variety of fish and of course her horse.My sister Toni started teaching Krista to ride when she was 4, and she loved it from the start. Though she did not have her own horse until she was 14, we did have a neighbor, Wendy that had horses and allowed Krista and her friends to ride as often as they wanted.Krista's other great love was music and singing, she was always singing either at home or with a choir that she had been a part of since grade school.She also wrote many wonderful songs/poems, she wrote her first song at the age of 5, and even had 2 published in a book of young poets when she was 13. This talent she inherited from her biological father who was a very talented country singer and songwriter. He even had a song that went platinum when he was 17. This side of him was not seen by many besides his only child Krista, he was mostly a biker and grew up an outlaw. He never spent much time in Krista's life, (but did write her many letters during the various times he was in prison.) until the last few years of his life. During this time they became close and it was very hard to have her lose another man whom she called dad.Krista dad Dave died when she was eight, and her father Bobby Lee died when she was 12. She wrote a beautiful song that she was asked to sing over and over at his funeral.Her most memorable songs and/or poems seemed to come from deaths. Like the one she wrote for her friends daughter that only lived a few months, or the one she wrote when my best friend of 30 yrs died in our home. (I plan to post these on Krista's My Space)Krista had known a lot of death in her short life, both family and a close friends. She even lived with the possibility of mine at any time since the accident on a job site that poisoned her dad and I in 1999, that resulted in his death and my damaged heart that left me permanently disabled. Dave and I were married in the hospital (we had lived together for 7 yrs) because I wasn't suppose to make it, I was trying to prepare them. As it turns out Dave was more sick then I was and ended up dieing less then 6 mos later. From then on I was determined not to make Krista an orphan. We struggled to keep our heads above water most of her life but Krista never complained, she was always happy. She may have been my only child but I was a neighborhood mom so there always seemed to be some other kids staying with us at one time or another. She also had Mark as a surrogate dad, for the last several years finally becoming the closest during the last 2yrs after they weren't in the same house. With Mark also came Jason who was like a big brother to Krista, and Jason's daughter Jaimah who lived with us from 6mos old till age 6. She loved her aunt Krista and Krista loved her as long as she stayed out of her room. We did manage to make it to Disneyland (Krista even sang a solo there with her choir during there 25th birthday celebration), Sea world and Universal Studios. We still had so many places we planned to go. She always loved the outdoors too, we used to go tubing down the salt river, and camping at the lake with a bunch of her friends every Spring Break.Krista's friends were a very important part of her life, she was the type of person that was always there for them, sometimes too much I felt. I think that this was her problem in High School. She was so social that she forgot to do or turn in her homework so her grades dropped, but she always managed to do good enough on her finals to pull them back up enough to pass the class. She did love everything about High School, the football games, the dances, in fact her last spirit day, all dressed in yellow as a senior, she said was the funnest day she had ever had at school.Krista was so looking forward to being 18, to graduating. She was undecided as to what career she would pursue, be it forensic science that really fascinated her, or as a hair dresser that she had already been doing for a couple of years (and was very good at) or even a veterinarian that she wanted to be since she was little. We will never know now but I do know that she would have been happy and good at whatever she decided. She would have also been a great mother, she loved kids and was always taking care of someones. She even wanted to adopt a friend of hers baby that had been living with us since he was a few weeks old when she turned 18.I can not imagine my life without her loving, caring, giving, smiling, singing personality here with me. I know my only child will be with me in spirit until we can be together again. Thank You for reading what I have written, I invite you to visit the guest book where you can leave memories of your own, Iknow there is so much more I could say about Krista. Krista was so much more, but it is so hard right now. So visit us here often and I'll have different pictures and memories. February 14th 2012It has been over 2 yrs since my daughter died. I have just met the woman Melissa, that Krista hit head on when she was killed. She saw me putting flowers on the cross marking the accident location and stopped. She was a very lovely person and has forgiven Krista for all the pain and suffering she endured. I have often thought of her and her family and cried for them, prayed for them. I did not realized how much I needed to know that Melissa and her loved ones were doing alright untill after I talked to her. She asked if I wanted to meet her son. he was the 8mo old infant in the car at the time of the accident I am so grateful he was not physically injured though the 2 months he lost not being with his mother can never be made up for. I THANK Melissa for taking the time to stop along the road today. I know that like myself driving by that stretch of Cave Creek Rd is very hard to do. Carrie L Brown