Dear Pumpkin,
Happy Birthday! You'd be 22 today! Can you imagine? I remember your 16th birthday like it was yesterday...the Mary J. Blige concert....you wore that turqoise snakeskin top from Express and i wore that tan and cream zebra print 2-piece whatever it was! LOL...thank God the fashions have evolved...didn't we think we were soooo hot?!
So I guess you saw the tattoo...hope you like it. I can't tell you how much I miss you. But I know you really never left and you speak to me in my dreams. Life is hard. Sometimes I wish I could be there with you but I know it's not my time and honestly, I'm living enough for the both of us. I wonder what you'd be like...I mean at 22. Would you really have come to Howard like we talked about? What would your major have been? I mean, forget college...I wonder how prom would have been? We had been talking about it forever...was Labat ever really going to ask you? It's been five years now and somethings never change.
To this day no one has ever been able to measure to the bond that we share. It's funny how we would stay on the phone for hours because for the most part now I hate the phone. And to this day no one else's tongue gets those extra sensitive bumps on them after eating too many Sour Patch Kids...I can't eat them without thinking of you. The tree they planted for you is growing leaps and bounds. I can't tell you how much I miss you. As you know, God sent me really awesome friends after you left. It was gonna take that or else I don't think I could have survived, even after 5 years too many thoughts of you can bring me to tears. It's crazy that I got this tattoo so that when people saw it they'd ask "Who's Gabby?" and I'd be able to tell them what an amazing person you were but I sometimes when they actually ask it pains me to tell them. They ask how you died and how old you were and I get mad at God for taking you all over again.
Well, I won't keep you...I have some more to do today but I did want to take a second and stop to tell you how much you are loved and how you are never ever ever ever forgotten.
Love Always,
Yasmine

October 31, 1984-April 9, 2001