Dear Poppie,

Throughout my life I always remember you being in it. Whether it be coming to my endless cheerleading competitions, letting me critique your singing, building cardboard forts in your living room or simply sharing all of your favorite things with me. It’s usually pretty common to drift some with age, but no matter the distance, we always found our way back even if it were only for a moment. What’s so odd is that we always had so much in common, which led to seemingly endless conversations that consisted of everything and nothing. Which in my eyes, those conversations mean more than anything.

You shared so much of yourself with me. Your hobbies, your knowledge and luckily your amazing taste in music. These lessons I will carry with me for the rest of my life and will forever be thankful for. Our love for Pink Floyd is one of my most favorite things we share because I can hear bits of you in every song now so they no longer sound the same. Without you I would’ve never even learned to appreciate music like I do and now you will forever live on through these songs.

I think you left pieces of yourself everywhere because I see you in literally everything now, including myself sometimes. Everyone you came in contact with always left the conversation gaining something. Whether it be a new song, how something worked or simply just a little bit more knowledge. You “didn’t know everything, just a little bit about a lot of things”, but if you asked me 18 more years from now, I will still tell you that you knew it all.

The cancer was one of the worst news for our family to ever get, but in an odd way that’s what brought everyone back together. Its as if it was hurting you physically yet stitching up all of the broken spots in our family and almost mending you emotionally. Making our family whole again was your main goal, and I can confidently say that this mission has been accomplished.

I will always regret the time not spent, but I will always be thankful for the time we did have. Especially our conversations there at the end. I realize now how extremely proud of me you were and that alone is enough to keep me going. There’s so much that I wish I could have told you, but I realize now that you already know everything that’s flying through my mind. I almost wish there was a phone that could reach heaven, but I’m not sure if that’s such a good idea because I would constantly be talking your ears off.

I don’t think the idea of you no longer being here has fully registered yet and I don’t think it will seem real for a very long time. It’s been a little over a month now, and I still feel like it all happened yesterday. It al happened so fast and its taken me this long to wrap my mind around it. I feel as if it’s been a joke in a way. Not the type of joke that everyone laughs along with, but more so a crude prank that I wasn’t let in on. It’s as if you are going to walk in the door shouting, “well hi there”, any moment now, lighting up the room as you always did and then everything will be normal again. The entire time you were fighting I never could let myself give up on the thought of you getting better, so I kept banking on the idea of more time, and losing you hurts so much but the things I never got to tell you bothers me even more.

My advice to anyone reading this is, do not take advantage of time. You never know when it’s your last time seeing someone, so never go to bed angry and always try to mend any broken bridges. Put your “need to’s” before your “have to’s”, meaning never pass up an opportunity to spend quality time with someone simply because you have other things to do. Those other things will always be there, where as that person may not. Even though you were called home way too soon, I am still extremely thankful to have had someone as amazing as you in my life.

Poppie, this is not a goodbye but an until next time. I love you so very much. I know you are doing great in heaven, but I still wish you were here.

Shine on your crazy diamond.