My youngest sister, Dana, married a wonderful man named Thomas who loves the Lord and her with the purest of heart. They were married Saturday and it was one of the most beautiful weddings I have ever attended because it was all about the marriage and the celebration and not the hectic details. Dana called me around 8:00 that morning (the wedding was an 11:00 brunch) and was crying because she missed Noah. I said that I was sorry that she missed him. We both thought he’d be there, throwing food and making noises babies shouldn’t make at a wedding. I thanked her for thinking of him because as his mommy, I think about him just shy of the 86,400 seconds that are in one 24hour period. She told me that she thinks about him all the time…

Now, I know other people love Noah (hello, strangers have fallen in love), but I guess I never really know how frequently anyone thinks of him. There will be a chapter in Noah’s book about our last 24hrs with him prior to laying him before the Lord and the 24hrs that followed, but besides the fact that she was his aunt and loved him, we asked Dana to do something for us that’s not quite the normal in regards to an aunt’s “role”…She is currently a P.A.-C for an ENT. However, one of her rotations in school was with one of the best plastic surgeons in Colorado. Dana loved that rotation because she is particular and precise and learned plastic stitches and was quite good at it, in fact. When she had an orthopedic surgical job after school, the “Frankenstein” surgeons didn’t quite know what to do with her perfect stitches, since, it’s apparently cool to have 6 inch long earthworm scars when someone can actually take the time to make them a bit more presentable. Anyway, we asked Dana if she would stitch Noah’s tracheotomy after we removed the Shiley. She told us she would be honored and with the most tender of care, she helped a mom and dad know that their son had nothing missing and nothing broken…We all have ways we remember Noah, different pictures that pop into our heads, but it occurred to me that morning that perhaps Dana’s memory wasn’t from one of the many times she’d come sing him praise and worship and play with his fingers. Maybe it was stitching up her nephew a month and a half prior to the second most important day in her life?