Carrie's amazing Kodiak community

I am amazed and humbled and awed by Carrie's Kodiak community. I have never seen anything like this.

I flew in yesterday and nobody was at the airport, so I hung out and studied and got myself together until the next flight from Anchorage came in, and then I realized nobody was coming. So I called Sarah Bird but she didn't have her cell on. Fortunately she had given me Natasha's number (Carrie's best friend).

Sue, Carrie's mom, had found my blog and read the post about not being sure I was coming, so assumed I wasn't coming and had told Natasha and others, so they thought I'd cancelled. But Natasha said, "Let me make a couple quick phone calls and I'll be there in a few minutes." She did and she was.

She took me to Carrie's house, where I got to see all her family family. We caught up (and Sue asked me all sorts of blog-related questions, leading to quite some embarrassment as I frantically tried to remember what on earth I'd written about lately). And it is so very strange to me to see Todd, Carrie's sister Rachel's husband, all grown up. I've known Todd since he was very young as he was friends with my brother, and have some embarrassing stories on him as well, and now he has a son who is 11 years old and he looks so much like his dad. Tyler is awesomely sweet. I was always so impressed with how everybody in Carrie's family gets along, and it's touching to see how that has extended to the brothers-in-law and their children.

Then we went to dinner at Joannie's (one of Carrie's 4H leader friends) house, where she fed at least 40 people fantastically. I got to meet Carrie's other 4H leader friends - Robin (who is housing me) and Julie, and met up with Lisa and Sarah (Carrie's other high school friends here).
It's so touching to see how Kodiak's community has rallied around her, and I've never seen anything like it. People from Declan's school have been feeding John and visitors, and from his work, and other groups they were involved with. Robin says that since news of Carrie's death got out, for the next two days her phone never stopped ringing with people offering help of all kinds - food, housing to visitors, miles for family to travel - it's been amazing.

I think that John, left to his own devices while profounding grieving, would have gone off quietly by himself to regroup, but that's not been an option. Carrie's friends told him to step back and they were taking care of everything, and that they have done extraordinarily. I'm so glad they were Carrie's friends.