KUSA – They made his favorite cake -- yellow with chocolate frosting -- his 4-year-old daughter blew out the candle and they sang “Happy Birthday.”
That’s how Gracie Parrish and her daughter Caroline celebrated what would’ve been Zack Parish’s 30th birthday in February.
“It was healthy, and it was good for Caroline to celebrate her dad in such a way that preschoolers love to celebrate his birthday and get really excited about that,” Gracie said. “That was really healing for Caroline, and in ways we wouldn’t have expected it to be so healing.”
Douglas County Deputy Zack Parrish was shot and killed by an armed, mentally ill man on New Year’s Eve. He had been working to calm the man after a dispute with his roommate.
Zack’s youngest daughter Everly was just 18 months old when he died.
“Both of them very clearly understand his absence,” Gracie said. “They very much feel his absence in the home. We are working through that.”
Some days that means visiting his name -- that’s what Gracie calls the grave site. Other days it’s looking at candid photos or videos, precious moments captured when Zack was alive. And some days, it’s dancing and singing to the songs that bring back memories.
“I never want my girls to focus on the grave,” Gracie said. “I never want them to focus on life that ended here. I want them to focus on where he is and what he’s doing and the eternity that we’ll spend with him one day.”
“I’m not only grieving for the husband that I lost, my best friend, my partner. I’m grieving the future that I had with him,” Gracie added. “I’m grieving the loss of dreams that we had together; I’m also grieving the loss the girls have that is their dad and what they could’ve experienced with him.”
She used to count the days from the moment she lost him; every Sunday, which she said hit her like a tidal wave.
“Then I started counting weeks. I look forward to when I cannot be counting the weeks, that it’s just months,” Gracie said.
Gracie said she's been called by God to share her journey, the journey of devastating grief, the journey of raising two young daughters without their father.
“I just felt very called that I needed to share that there is hope beyond the hurt,” Gracie Parrish said. “I’ve experienced tragedy, I’ve experienced sorrow upon sorrow, I’ve experienced in a very public way and if I can encourage anyone that’s going through sorrow right this second, I can say 13 weeks later, it does get better. And it does get easier and that there is hope, and I have found hope.”
Gracie wrote about that in what she called her “Fight Song,” which she read to 9NEWS.
“I realize very quickly that I had two choices to make,” she wrote. “I could spend the rest of my life wishing for what wouldn’t be, denying my new reality and living in a very dark place, or I could try to accept this new life, heal as best I could, believe that my life is not over and that God is not finished with me yet. I had to understand that Zack’s death would not define me, yet how I respond to his death will.”
“I have heard countless stories of courage and strength that push me through that days that feel unbearable,” she wrote. “It’s the mother delivering her still born baby and going home to take care of her other children, it’s the father who works 40 hours a week, so he can maintain health insurance for his son who is receiving chemo therapy at the hospital. It’s the parents who work multiple jobs to put food on the table for their kids. That is courage and endurance and strength. I’m just like you.”
Gracie said there are many families just like hers, who make the sacrifice every day, who choose to serve their communities.
“We oftentimes don’t think about there is so much humanity behind the badge,” Gracie said. “As a spouse or a family member, you completely understand that it’s part of what you love [about] that person, you love that characteristic about them, you love how caring and compassionate they are, but you also love how strong and courageous they are as well. But that doesn’t take away the fear. There [are] a lot of families out there, there [are] a lot of spouses that are afraid when they kiss their husband or their wife goodbye as they get ready to go on the shift. We just take that with stride and understand that it’s a part of the job.”
Gracie Parrish said Zack Parrish loved his job,. She described him as “fantastic cop” who lived his job and “breathed it and his blood truly ran blue.”
“It was his calling, it was his passion,” she said.
That’s his legacy, Gracie Parrish said.
He will also be remembered as a great dad.
“He loved his girls with all his heart and he put so much intentional time into them,” she said.
Their girls bring Gracie Parrish joy these days, dinners with friends and mundane things she used to do before her husband died.
Gracie Parrish said she leans on her faith. She leans on the belief that, in her words, the sun will come up in the morning.
“Instead of chasing after the sunset, run into the darkness looking for the sunrise,” she said. “Because that’s the fastest way you’re going to see the sun come up.”
“This isn’t the last people [will] see of me,” Gracie Parrish said. “This isn’t the last that people hear of me. This is a story I never thought I’d be on, but this is my story. So I either embrace it and I run into the darkness or I turn around and I hide and I can’t do that for my girls. I can’t. I can’t do it for myself, I can’t do it for Zack. This is the new journey that I’m on. We’re just going to embrace it. We’re just going to face the wind.”
