My dear Sarah,
March 31, another year, this year you’d be 30! Who would have thought 30 years ago that we’d only have 12-1/2 years to harvest the memories to hold us for a lifetime? Who would have thought that you would be gone before us – it’s the wrong order of things for a parent, any parent to outlive their child. Bob Hope sang “Thanks For The Memories… Of faults that you forgave, Of rainbows on a wave…” Thank you Sarah, for the memories of your smile, your laugh, your beautiful personality and so much more. As we prepare to move and leave the home you were “raised” in we take those beautiful memories with us. A home, we’ve come to realize, is not the walls, the furnishings, the windows or the doors; home is where our hearts take us no matter where that is. Perhaps the change will do us good as we will surround ourselves with the memories of you, and James, and all the things life has taught us. We are forever grateful for the memories you left us with and what your short life taught us. It’s not the material things that make a home it’s the love and serenity that dwells within it and fills our hearts. What’s in our hearts and our minds can never be taken from us.
We haven’t forgotten you Sarah, we never will, or the courage you exhibited throughout your illness. We will continue to honor your memory through the children our Foundation continues to bring smiles to. Our mission, your mission, will thrive in Hicksville and expand to Florida so that other children may be comforted through your eyes. Life here is upside down right now, driven by a horrible pandemic that has caused life as we know it to cease. I remember one night when mom was working and you asked me what was for dinner. I answered that I was making pancakes and you replied “daddy…pancakes are for breakfast”. I told you then we were having ‘an upside down day”. Now all our lives are upside down. However, we are survivors and learned through our experience while you were sick and when you passed that “normal is highly overrated”. While we honor another birthday without you we also pray for all the families, friends and our supporters struggling through this unprecedented time. In “A Christmas Carol” Tiny Tim says ‘God Bless us, every one’. What better statement can anyone make at this time, God Bless us all and God Bless the world as this has united the people, not only of our great country, but the world as a whole. Isn’t it a shame that it takes a critical nightmare like this to bring people together? Why can’t that always be the case? After all, we’re all we have floating around in space on this big, blue bouncing ball called earth!
You never could have imagined how many lives yours would touch. Maybe that’s why you were always in a hurry, your beautiful brain knew somehow that you had 12 short years to cram it all in. They say we start our lives as angels in Heaven and before we are born we’re given a choice of years, sort of a contract. Sarah, I wish you had signed a long term contract because you’d still be here with us and we could celebrate your birthday “live and in person” instead of by words and memories.
I miss you my dear Sarah and you’re always in my thoughts. I think you would be proud of what your Foundation has accomplished and you would be very proud of James and the fine man he has become and the choices he has made. Losing you while he was so young helped shape James into who he is today and I believe you are with him at every moment, guiding him and protecting him. His love of life and for Kylie, his beautiful wife, demonstrate everything he learned growing up and that includes his time spent with you and his experiences through your illness and death.
After losing a son Dwight Eisenhower commented “There is nothing in life like the loss of a child, you never get back to the way things should be”. Any parent who has lost a child, for any reason, knows that to be the case and any parent who loses a child knows that things will never be normal again. A parent never gets over the loss of a child but somehow they find the strength to try and understand it, deal with a new “empty” sense of normal and they try to get through it. However, no parent should ever have to feel such a sense of loss. We are blessed that we had you with us for 12 years and were able to secure so many beautiful memories to keep us afloat. Our family puzzle will always be missing a piece and always have an empty place at the table in honor of you.
Sarah, thank you for being my little girl, my beautiful angel and watching over all of us. I think I can speak for mom and James that we always feel your presence as our guardian angel. So tonight we’ll honor your memory but your favorite meal of McDonalds will have to wait until things here get back to normal; whenever that will be. I hope you are at peace; I love you Sarah, Happy Birthday.
auf wiedersehen my angel.
