Today has been a very odd day... The funeral is tomorrow, by the way. Tonight was the wake.

I got a call first thing this morning from subway. Apparently one of my former teachers saw me at work, and tried to reach me there. My co-worker took down the number, and relayed it to me. I called, and was told that the poem (found at the bottom) that I wrote on her Caringbridge site was printed off and taken to the hospital, where it was read to her and her brother. We'll never know if she actually heard it, but it meant the world to me to know that the words had reached her ears. She told me that her brother broke down and cried for the first time at the hospital, and that the family was so touched that they wanted me to speak at the funeral...

At the wake tonight, I found out I would be reading a passage that she wrote for her autobiography on the school website. Her brother hugged me like he had known me for years, and I thanked him for the chance to be able to speak at the funeral... He said that after he heard that poem, he knew that the honor would be the families, and that he had been truly touched by what I wrote. He then asked me if it wasn't too personal, would i rad the poem, and of course I accepted......

This is the first time that my writing has ever affected anyone like this... I really don't know what to say except that if I never go anywhere else in life, I can say that I actually had an effect on someones life...... And that means more to me then words can describe. Now I am going to be a part of the caravan from the funeral home to the church with the rest of the family, an honor I could never expect..... I'm still speechless.

---When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.---