Happy Birthday Reagan!

Today my little sister Reagan Noel would turn 5 years old.

So strange to think about. I'm not one to express my emotions easily. I never went to my sister's grave after the funeral. Don't really know why...I just think it's kind of morbid. The cemetery may be a place for some to mourn but I think it's weird. I don't really share my feelings about my sister ever. Not with anyone. I just didn't want anyone to pity me or for me to pity myself. Other people have lost family members before. Everyone will lose someone close to them. It was also weird that I never even got to meet her because I was at school. I was at my friend's house for Thanksgiving in Provo when I got the phone call. It never seemed real to me. Sometimes it will hit me when I'm watching a show and they show a down syndrome girl or when I see Kian playing by himself and I think about what a great big brother he would be. But the thing that helps is knowing that I will know her someday. I will get to braid her hair and do silly things and all those things big sisters do with their little sisters. And Kian will get to be her big brother someday too. A quote that I've always loved was one that I heard shortly after my sister died.

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come together to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says: 'There! She's gone.' 'Gone where?' Gone from my sight--that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her; and just at the moment when someone at my side says, 'There! She's gone,' there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, 'there she comes!'

We miss you baby girl!