Sara Moody

I had no idea! I'd seen comments from mutual friends on Facebook with well-wishes and prayers. Yet somehow, in the midst of juggling a full-time job, college, mandatory internship, and two kids, it slipped my mind to dig deeper to find out exactly what was going on. It's not that I didn't care. And I know that you know that. 

I'm crying like a baby here, even though I know you wouldn't want that. How do you process the information and realization that a person so dear to you, someone who had a direct [positive] influence on you, might not be around for long? 

I know I sent you a message a while ago thanking you for all you did for me when I was in your care. But I want you to know, again, just how much you mean to me, how much your love, care, and devotion impacted me. 

You're my role model, "auntie Claire". You lived an amazing life and I know you left a deep and wonderful mark on many others' hearts and lives as you did on mine. I don't know how things will turn out, but I want you to know that you will forever live in my memory and my heart. And when I tell my kids stories about my childhood, you will be in them.

I wish I could hug you now, as a grown woman, and thank you again for seeing and acknowledging the good and potential in me, a little 9-year-old squirt. I still have the handwritten appreciation notes you wrote me all those years ago. I don't know how things were for you as a mother, a woman, a human being back then, but I know that you didn't let anything interfere with your job of caring for us, which you did with your whole heart and with a beautiful smile on your face. 

My definition of an angel is you ... I love you! 

Missy