She Was My Neighbor

The scene is set. As I stand here before a small group of people I have come to know too well in the past year. I started to speak after taking a long drawn out breath to gain the courage. This is Erin's story:

My name is Sarah and Erin was my neighbor. She was also my friend. I had met her less than a year before she passed but I knew more about her than most of you here today in that short amount of time.

Erin was always a lover of two things, nature and running. Every day, like clockwork, she ran out around the pond that’s adjacent to our apartment building. Some days she would run exactly one mile, but other days she would just keep running until she physically couldn’t anymore and then walk back all alone across the desolate parking lot at the base of the building attempting to catch her breath. It always made me concerned for her. I would see her go out there and I would get nervous. However, there was no changing her mind. She needed to run because she felt free and like she could take off and fly at times.

She was never nervous.

For her, feeling the sun, as hot as August would allow it to be, on her already tan skin left her feeling like she was the sun it’s self.

In all aspects of life she wanted to be the sun. Erin was always happy, always kind, always warm toward those she knew and also those who were nothing but a stranger. When I met her she practically inserted herself into my life and was there at a time that I needed her most. I will forever be grateful that she was my neighbor. But more than anything, she was the sun because her light shone brighter than anyone else.

Then one day her light unfortunately, and untimely, faded out on this very trail, at this exact time one year ago today. This spot, this was where Erin collapsed. When I noticed that evening that she hadn’t come home, I walked my dog out around this pond to see if I could locate her. And at this exact spot I found her lying helpless and did everything I could to bring her back.

As you all know, it was later found that she had a rare heart condition that came out of nowhere and took her from us. I wasn’t ready to lose my friend, and for the past year I have been struggling to understand how somebody so fit and so active, so happy and so full of life, could no longer walk, or run rather, on this earth.

So in Erin’s honor, here today, we are planting a tree at the very pond that she was all too familiar with. We are planting a pear tree because the pear symbolizes prosperity, immortality and female beauty. Because of her presence in our lives, Erin has made each and everyone of us wealthy with love and happiness. With this tree, her legacy lives on and will never die from our hearts. And when this tree bears fruit a few years down the road after planting its roots and growing tall and strong, she will continue to gift us with her beauty year after year.

If Erin were here today, running this trail, she would stop to see if she could help us plant. So today I ask each one of you to please grab a handful of dirt and place it around the tree as we finish planting so that each one of you could say you helped return the favor that we all owed to her.

I finished speaking and then quickly shed a tear and let it fall to the hard, cold ground. When we finished planting, the group that had gathered to pay tribute to our friend sat in silence as the sun finish setting; closing the chapter of grief in our lives that we all shared.

We knew that from now on we would have to be happy; for Erin.