Sara

When you are young, all things seem possible.  When you are young, you are invincible. 

 

When you are young, you think you know it all.  When you are young, the world seems black and white.  Gray areas never enter your mind.  When you are young, you think your parents are stupid.  And as you mature, you realize they weren’t as stupid as they seemed.

  

Sara was born on September 25, 1988.  From the moment she was born, she had the biggest green eyes imaginable.  When they put that perfect child in our arms, the euphoria was immeasurable.  We were blessed with a healthy baby girl.  10 fingers 10 toes – life is good! Four years later, her brother Joseph joined her.  Even though Sara wanted a baby sister, Joe became her best friend.  Partners in crime on how to annoy us, they specialized in poking fun at us. The best times spent with both of them were in our backyard on summer afternoons in our pool barbequing on our Weber grill.  No gas grill for us.  You can take us out of the city but not the city out of us.  We had the rich man’s family and our beautiful home in Hamilton Square.  What could be better than this?

Sara was a shy child but still had a lot of friends.  Teachers loved her.  She was kind, considerate, always willing to help.  She played soccer, field hockey, went to dancing school, took trumpet lessons, did girl scouts, loved roller coaster rides, was an excellent swimmer and loved the beach.  Sara would describe herself as the perfect blend of garlic and Gaelic.  She looked Italian and loved the food but St. Patrick’s Day was her favorite.  Even though she loved the color purple, green found its way on her body two weeks before March 17. Rain or shine, she was at the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Trenton. Wearing her green Seton Hall tee shirt, she was there to down the first Guinness. 

Known as “Sunshine” in the day care center where she worked, parents could not say enough good things about her with their kids.  She was put in the baby room since her manager said she had the most patience.  Even though she wasn’t supposed to have favorites, she loved Willow and Nathan.  Her favorite three girls were Molly, Abigail and her Clair Bear.  They followed her around and clung to her legs.  She taught them how to make leprechauns traps for St. Patrick’s Day.  We are still not exactly sure what that is.Sara studied Psychology at Seton Hall University.  She was five classes away from graduation.  Her dream was to be an adolescent counselor specifically for depression and anxiety.  She knew she had to get her masters in order to become a therapist.  She wanted to graduate from Seton Hall first before even pursuing which graduate school would be the best to achieve her goals. We believe she would have made an awesome counselor.  

So when did the drug use begin?  We can give you our best guess but we will never really know for sure.  We believe Sara led two lives.  Sara could be a responsible student excelling in school and watching children.  And she could also be the one who continued using drugs to numb herself from whatever pain she was feeling.  One of her text messages said “Why should I stop when it feels so good?”  And we wonder, why wasn’t life enough for her?  And we come to the conclusion that she hadn’t experienced it yet.  Once again, when you are young, you think you know it all.  What she was experiencing were the pains of adolescence and if she just lived long enough to give life a chance, I believe she would have been pleasantly surprised.  I can’t begin to tell you how many times I would tell her just that. But unfortunately, that chance was not going to happen.  In her mind, she knew it all and as parents we were plain stupid.   

What do we want you to remember about Sara?  She was a beautiful, happy girl that loved children, Blink 182, purple, the Disney princesses and wasn’t really “Sunshine” until she had her first latte in the morning.  Sara was smart and as the rehab counselor told her – too smart for her own good.  She was our angel here on earth and will forever be our angel in heaven.  We have to believe she is in a better place and that one day we will be together again.