To my cousin, Luke Adam Sanburg

I've been thinking about you all day and I can't believe today marks 17 years since you were born. I'm still amazed at how you and I were such kindred spirits from day one despite the nearly 15 year age difference. We just loved each other and had a bond. You were such a cute baby and I begged your mom to let me baby-sit you. Even when I came home visiting from college I told her I needed to get some "Sanburg kid time" in.

I was always impressed with what a little smarty pants you were and what a funny little boy you were too. I will forever remember what positive, negative, and neutral buoyancy are thanks to you. And I remember being shocked when you started explaining how if you have two X's you're a girl and one X and one Y means you're a boy. I didn't learn that until high school!
You made me laugh when you showed off your "8 minute abs" and the story of you getting your head stuck in the rocking chair is still told today.

I remember once when you wanted to share with me what you'd written in your journal. I really loved that. I also remember thinking how you were writing things beyond your 9 years.

My mom told me once about how you told your mom and her the name of the man who held baby Jesus out of a Bible story they were having trouble remembering. You knew it because it came from the Book of Luke! How good you were!

I have wished that I'd seen you more before you left this world, but I was living far away and newly married and having babies of my own. I was taking things in life for granted on some level, I guess. But, as I shared with your parents once, I found comfort in a passage from the book Anne of the Island that I picked up one night around the time of your memorial service. Anne is reunited with an old student whom she loved and it says:

"Paul was almost grown up, too. He was sixteen, his chesnut curls had given place to close-cropped locks, and he was more interested in football than fairies. But the bond between him and his old teacher still held. Kindred spirits alone do not change with changing years."

Kindred spirits alone do not change with changing years. Isn't that beautiful? I know that you still loved me the same way I loved you. I know that is how it remains. What an awesome thing to think of the work you must be doing in heaven now. The Lord needed someone as special as you to do it.

I continue to keep in a drawer the poems that you wrote that I was priveleged to read at your memorial. My favorite is "Where do I fit?" because it shows what a mature, righteous young man you were, again wise beyond your years.

Where do I fit?
Where do I go?
Should I do this?
I just don't know!
I'm good right here
I'm good right there
Where should I be?
Oh, where, where, where?
It's all going forward, and no turning back
I'll go where life leads me and stay on the track.

Thank you for being all you were to me and for meaning so much to your parents and siblings, Aunt Vonnie, and so many others that you touched in your 13 years here. I have missed you these past four years and I so look forward to giving you a great big hug when I see you again. I hope and pray I can raise my own little Luke to be as wonderful as you.

Love, Janet