She can’t hold Sarah’s hand anymore, so she holds her light, turning love into action, one small kindness at a time. Kelli tells the story of her sister, Sarah, who she still calls her guardian angel. Six girls were growing up, tight enough to be each other’s protectors, honest enough to be each other’s bullies, and loving enough always to circle back. Their oldest sister, Megan, often felt like a second mom. They all adored animals; Megan rescued a cat who became Sarah’s shadow, Maple, the little heartbeat in Sarah’s lap. Family was the center of everything.
Sarah chased big dreams and made them real. Brilliant and stubborn in the best way, she earned a full scholarship to East Stroudsburg University and graduated with a degree in nursing in 2018. She started in inpatient rehab and then step-down ICU, but her heart was set on the neonatal ICU. Kids lit her up, and she was already the kind of aunt who showed up with both arms and her whole heart.
Sarah was the nurse you hope for: the one who listened and then did a little extra. On night shift, an older patient confided she missed walking at sunrise with her best friend. When Sarah clocked out, she grabbed two coffees and sat beside her to watch the day begin. During the pandemic, when her unit became a COVID ward for the sickest patients, she kept returning to work even after being discharged from the hospital. She didn’t perform heroics for applause; kindness was simply her default setting.
Behind the uniform, Sarah was fighting her own battle. Strange symptoms piled up, crushing abdominal pain, vomiting, dizziness, and heart palpitations. One day, the phone rang on the way to visit a friend’s new baby: Get to the hospital now. Her potassium was dangerously low. Kelli stayed by her for days, trying to be brave as doctors searched for answers through repeat admissions and two surgeries.
Finally, a doctor tested for a rare autoimmune adrenal disorder. The diagnosis was Addison’s disease. It explained so much and promised a hard road. Sarah lost weight, grew fragile, and kept landing back in the hospital. In November 2020, she had a significant seizure and almost died. An infection followed, hiding behind the symptoms she knew too well. On December 17, 2020, Sarah went into septic shock, then cardiac arrest. The doctors tried everything, but she slipped into a coma, and her brain had been without oxygen too long. Her twin, Jenna, and their dad held her hands as she opened her eyes one last time and then let go. “God must have really needed a nurse up there,” their father said. “He took the best one.”
Grief arrived like a storm that didn’t lift. Kelli flew to New Jersey and sat on Sarah’s bed, the one she used to tease her about for being messy, wishing for one more lecture and laugh. The service showed the measure of Sarah’s life: coworkers, friends, patients, and family filling the room with tears. Kelli stood by the casket, brushing Sarah’s hair, unable to leave when it was time. The thought of cremation shredded her. People promised heaven, but certainty felt out of reach. The first months were a fog of pain. Kelli whispered to herself not to give up, counted Thursdays like mile markers of absence, and prayed to Sarah nightly because silence felt like forgetting.
Then came a small mercy that felt like a message. The night before the funeral, Kelli begged God to tell her Sarah was safe. After the service, she lost the eulogy she had written; it was stormy, and she assumed it was gone. The next day, outside her parents’ house, she stepped on a sheet of paper. Dry. Untouched. Her dad said without thinking, “She held onto it for you.” Kelli took it as an answer: I’m okay. I’ll see you again. It didn’t erase the pain, but it gave her a handhold.
More than a year later, peace still comes and goes, but Kelli knows how to keep Sarah close: by living the way Sarah lived, gentle, relentless, beyond limits. During Addison’s Disease Awareness Month, she raises money for Adrenal Insufficiency United to help doctors recognize adrenal crises sooner, support families, and push for research. She runs “Tip for a Cause” at her beauty school station and shares the fundraiser online. Friends and family have already given over $200 toward a $1,000 goal. It’s not just a number; it’s proof that love can move through grief and do work in the world.
Kelli misses her sister daily, the snaggletooth smile, the soft hair she used to smooth, the voice that could steady a room. But she has learned that love doesn’t end when a heartbeat does. It keeps breathing through the choices you make, the causes you lift, the kindness you refuse to postpone. Some days grief tightens its grip; most days, the family keeps going, and so can others. You don’t have to let go of the love to move forward. You carry it into action.
