She would paint on anything.

Your artwork is incredible. Your Aunt Audrey arranged it, so it’s well displayed. Ironic that you get your own little exhibit. It tears me to pieces that this will be your only one.

[…] planning your funeral meant going back through old pictures and skimming your books and music, and it made me reconnect a bit to the Kelsey who was my daughter. I had, if I am being really honest, lost sight of that person. I saw Kelsey the Disease mostly this last year. But, I remembered who you really were over the last few days.

I remembered how you mentored a learning challenged child in your elementary class without anyone asking it of you. I remembered you getting tossed out of a friend’s house for cleaning his room (of course, I never forgot that one because I was upset with his mother). I remembered how when you were 9 or 10 we had to get gym shoes for you and you announced to me that you would not consider Nikes because they used child labor.

I remembered, painfully, I might add, how you held my head when I had morning sickness when I was pregnant with your sister. You gave me the biggest, warmest hug right before I went to the hospital to have her.

I saw all these pictures of you with your cousins. You loved them, it was so obvious. That is who you really were.

~Kelsey’s mom

I told her how she taught me so much about words and literature and the beauty of the written language…how she, almost single-handedly, made me want to be a writer.

I thanked her for always inspiring me, for teaching me all that she has, for sharing her knowledge and wisdom with me so that now I can go out in the world and be wonderful.

I told her I’m going to write a book about her some day…a book about sisters, about MY sister.

~Marissa, Kelsey’s sister

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