Lindsey

 (Living Through Laughter, Lindsey's motto)

My dear friend Lindsey, who has fought hard against cancer and tumors for the last eleven years, passed away last Wednesday.  We've been friends since she moved into our neighborhood the summer before 4th grade.  I can't imagine a person more wonderful, full of light, and perfect in the world.  I'm not very good at putting feelings down into words, so I'm not really going to try, aside from saying this:  I love her very much and I will miss her. 

The funeral was this afternoon and later her family and Josh's family invited us down to Utah Lake to release some floating candles in honor of her. 

 

We arrived at the lake right as the sun went down behind the mountains across the lake and we waited for it to be dark enough to light the lanterns.  As we waited we were feasted upon by mosquitoes.  

Those little white spots are NOT stars.  They are the millions of bugs swarming all over us. 

There were forty lanterns in all and Eric and I, with Nitasha, Aaron, and her mom, Christine, attempted to light one.

Unfortunately, ours had a hole at the top and was unable to float away, but we will be patching the hole and trying again another night.

Here are a few pictures of some of the lanterns floating away.  They didn't all rise together like I had envisioned, probably from watching Tangled, but they were beautiful and each one was a beacon of hope as it flew up towards the heavens.  

Overall, the day was beautiful.  Painful, but beautiful. 

I also took a picture of a photo shoot we interrupted when we arrived at the beach, because Lindsey would have thought it was hilarious. It's rather blurry because I had too zoom up from pretty far away to capture it as surreptitiously as I could.