I’ll remember Lauren, one of my oldest friends, in many ways. I’ve known Lauren since the summer after third grade and had the opportunity to see her grow into a beautiful young woman. I loved Lauren’s love of travel, history, her infectious laugh, and radiant smile. I won’t forget the times on the playground at Palisades, gossiping during freshman year study hall, first boyfriends, birthdays, shopping, proms, sneaking off campus for lunch, coffee, Hoppus’ history tests, e-mails, weddings, babies, check-in calls, and sharing the ups and downs of daily life and big milestones.
Lauren, you touched my life, and I am proud to have called you my friend. I love you and will miss you, dear friend.
“At night you will look up at the stars. Where I live everything is so small that I cannot show you where my star is to be found. It is better, like that. My star will be just one of the stars, for you. And so you will love to watch all the stars in the heavens…They will all be your friends…You–you alone–will have stars as no one else has them–In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing, when you look at the sky at night…You–only-you–will have stars that can laugh! And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure…And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, “Yes, the stars always make me laugh!”…It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh…”
