Emily, the early years.

I've known Emily since she was born, so I have tons and tons of stories about her from when she was little to when she was grown up. My family has been best buds with the Specs since before my parents were even married, and we've spent alot of time together at each other's houses and on various family vacations. I have to say that Emily, being the youngest of the four of us girls (the ages went Katie, Me, my sister Lauren, then Emily), as well as the smallest, wasn't always as fearless and assertive as she grew up to be. When she was small, her greatest joy in life was to twirl around in silky pink nightgowns and pretend she was a princess or a ballerina. She was just about the girliest little girl you could conceive of. I think alot of her confidence and toughness come from having an older sister like Katie. Katie was always into sports, and I'm not talking the girlie ones either. She loves things like soccer and hockey where she can kick some ass. I remember Katie used to yell at her because anywhere we went in the house, there would be little pieces of bagel or apple slice with one bite out of them lying around on the floor and on furniture. Although Emily had alot of great qualities from the beginning, her family definitely had a large role in shaping the person she became. One thing that Emily always was was a free spirit. She never cared what anyone else thought. If anything, she wanted to do the opposite of what everyone else was doing. She never did it in an elitist way though. She just liked what she liked and wasn't afraid of admitting it.

One particular memory of that came to mind was her undying (though shortlived) devotion for the band FIVE. I don't know if anyone even remembers them, but Emily was obsessed with them for about 4 months in highschool. She found out the tour dates for when they were coming into the area, then purposefully went to the airport with a friend to meet them. When they come into the terminal, she jumped the rope and ran up to them. The security guards were shooing her away when one of the band members told them to let her over and preceeded to hug her and take pictures with her. She was wearing a blue, metallic jacket that day, and for the next month she wore it everyday because it touched FIVE.

Another experience with pop music happened around the same time. N'Sync was just becoming popular and had a new song out "God Must Have Spent A Little More Time On You." The song was playing over and over again on Z100 like all new songs must, so we all knew the words to the damn thing, like it or not. Since the four of us grew up together, we've all developed a very similar (albeit sick) sense of humor when it comes to perverted topics, words, movements . . . whatever. If it's perverted, it's probably hilarious. Anyway, Emily made up a dance to that song and changed the words a bit to fit in with our love of potty language. Because this is a family site, I'm not gonna put up all the words, but the last line of the chorus pretty much sums it up: Instead of "God must have spent a little more time on you" Emily sang "God must have spent a little more time on your AREA," while covering her pride and joy. Man, we laughed for hours about that song.

Anyway, I'll try to post more stories about Em as they pop into my head. There are just so many of them that it's hard to keep track of them all. One day someone will say something, or I'll see something random, and the memories just pop out of thin air. It doesn't matter if you haven't thought about it for a year or a decade, they seem to stand out like it was yesterday. Emily really had the ability to make herself standout as someone special, and I think she was so successful at doing that because she made everyone else feel special when they were with her. The whole process of loving and losing Emily has changed my outlook on life forever. None of us are safe, there's no certainty when it comes to life; and although learning that lesson has been really hard for me, I know that I might not have pushed myself to live life as I should if this had never happened. It's a start, at least, to finding the silver lining. Now, everytime I think of just being lazy or skipping out on an event, I think about what Emily would have done in my situation. 9 times out of 10, thinking of her has given me that extra push to try something new or do something potentially embarrassing. Even if it is embarrassing, I know it wouldn't have stopped her from laughing and telling everyone she ran into that week about how she once again made a fool out of herself. The fact that she wanted to share EVERYTHING shows just how much confidence and faith she had in the people around her. I know I'll try to strive to be like her everyday for the rest of my life. It'll probably end up being a thousand times better by the end than it would have been otherwise. Emily and Katie have always been my sisters, maybe not in blood, but in my soul I know they are. You can't ever break a bond like that, so I have confidence I'll see Emily every day in the little things that I used to take for granted but that she always found to be beautiful.
- Danielle