Happy Birthday My Dear Sweet Angel!

Today is a big one. Your 40th Birthday. We would have thrown you a party with all of your friends to celebrate such a milestone. Our baby turning the Big Four Oh! Who would have ever thought that you wouldn't be around to see it? Not me. Not anyone.

Four years ago it was my turn. I didn't want to celebrate though. You weren't there to help me through it. It was the only one that ever mattered much to me. I'd never had a problem with my aging until my fortieth was approaching. Nineteen to twenty, twenty nine to thirty. Those were nothing to me. Like I said, this one was big though. But then to make matters worse you left us just weeks before, 58 days to be exact and it was no time at all to celebrate life but instead mourn the loss of someone spectacular.

They forced me though. They threw a party and surprised me with our brother's arrival home. We all went out on a houseboat and celebrated my life when what we should have been doing was celebrating yours. That night we took a family picture for the first time in all of those 58 days. Mom had us all sit together to get the shot with the water as the backdrop. I cried the whole time. It wasn't a family picture after all because your smiling face wasn't sitting right there beside me as it always had been in the past. Something big was missing from the pictures that night. Our family was no longer complete but had a hole right where you should have been.

You would have loved it out there by the way. You would have been fascinated by traveling along the waters edge as we did. You would have found such beauty in everything around you as you often did throughout your short life. Such joy you were little girl. You radiated happiness even at times when you hurt so very badly inside. Not that anyone would ever have known that you felt such pain. You never let it show. Never pushed anything but sunshine into other peoples lives. I wish I could have protected you from that my dear sister. I'd give anything to have been able to.

The years have been passing on by, just like nothing major happened 4 years ago. Like someone as special as you wasn't taken from this world and time should have stood still because of it. So many things have happened since you were taken from us. So many important things that I wanted to share with you. The things you loved most in this world, love and life and you weren't here to be a part of them.

Cassidy was married on the beach in North Carolina and you were missing from that too. You and her had such a special bond. You helped me raise her so of course you were supposed to be there too. I thought of you that weekend and how you would have been so happy for her and loved all that was beautiful about two people joining together like they did. Then a year later the birth of her first son and how much I knew you would have been amazed at the young girl you once held in your arms now having children of her own. What an unbelievable thing it is to be a grandmother dear Angie. I wish you were here. It was our plan after all, to grow old together and watch as our grandchildren played together just like our own children had done. That was what was supposed to happen any way.

I know that it's selfish of me to need you here so badly. To miss you so very much that I ache inside. At least now I can get through a day without crying for you. That's something right there anyway because I didn't think it possible at one point. That doesn't mean I don't think about you each and every day. That will never happen please know. How could I ever forget someone I shared so very much of my life with? Shared a room with for something like 16 years. I only wish now that it were more. So very much more.

On this day, your birthday, you will be celebrated and loved and thought about even more so than you are throughout the rest of the year. We love you dear baby sister. We miss you tremendously and we know that you are watching down on us and helping us to make the right decisions always.

Happy Birthday Angie, sweet angel of mine. I love you forever, I like you for always. As long as I'm living my dear sister you'll be.