the background story
I was born in Arizona in December, thus the name Holly.
I am the youngest of four girls, and the daughter of a Montessori teacher and a pediatric dentist.
I grew up a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and my testimony of the restored gospel helped me tremendously, especially through my dad's sudden death on Thanksgiving morning when I was only 6 years old.
I grew up loving music, singing, playing piano and string bass. I had a dramatic flare that led me to recite poems and perform in school plays and musicals.
Unfortunately, in my younger years, I cared more about socializing than schoolwork, so after graduating high school, I only dabbled a bit in college and never took it seriously enough to graduate. I justified this mostly because all I ever wanted in life was to be a wife and a mother. I didn't quite grasp how much getting an education would have helped me with those goals.
In 2007 I married Jeff Decker for ‘time and all eternity’ in the Mesa Arizona LDS temple.
We had our first pregnancy six months after our wedding, but it resulted in a miscarriage. We were heartbroken and wondered if we would ever have children. We moved to Utah for Jeff’s schooling.
In 2009, I gave birth to a ten-pound baby boy, whom we named Charles. To our shock, eleven months later I gave birth to Evelynn, and we now had ‘Irish twins’.
Life was busy but we added Sally in 2011, and then after Jeff graduated with a bachelor's degree from nursing school, we moved back to Arizona, where we owned our very first home. Walter came next, in 2012, and life was full.
Gladys came to us in 2013, a tiebreaker! Then Roger evened things out in 2015, and we felt blessed beyond words. Life was challenging, but we kept putting one foot before the other.
Soon, Jeff was ready to buy our dream house. He found a home in Casa Grande, with an acre of land, and we decided to pack up and head out. We moved there with stars in our eyes for the future we would build.
Life wasn’t so magical, though, and both Jeff and I struggled with mental and emotional health. Jeff continued schooling and specialized in wounds, ostomy, and continence care, and also received a double master’s degree in nursing and business.
We added James to our family in 2016 and Leena in 2018. We thought our family was complete, with four boys and four girls, and we began to wonder what was next for us.
After a lot of conversation, and with a feeling of hope, we chose to sell everything we had, including our beloved home, and in July 2019, we moved in with my mom while Jeff prepared to apply for medical school. I told him that he had helped me reach my dreams of motherhood and now it was time for him to pursue his dreams of becoming a doctor. He had my full support.
But in September 2019, Charles was diagnosed with bone cancer. Everything in our life changed. Medical school was thrown out the window as we now faced chemo treatments, an amputation of his leg, and inevitably the terminal reality of hospice care.
COVID-19 struck the world, and we had no idea what would happen, but we homeschooled all the kids and tried to make as many memories together as possible. Amid all of this, God blessed us with a baby boy in 2020, whom we named Richard.
Sadly, in July of 2021, when Charles was 12, he peacefully passed into the next life. He never met his baby brother Ebenezer in November of 2021, but he did help us name him.
Trying to pick up the pieces of our lives after Charles died has been a whirlwind. Sometimes our family feels too broken and dysfunctional to go on. But by the grace of God, we are still here. Still trying. Still hanging on. And we hope that we can find peace and happiness in this life and the next through Christ.
We continue to have many ups and downs, which you can read about here on this blog.
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