Samantha Lee Ann,

Some knew Sammy as this precocious loveable girl, some as this vibrant woman, some were lucky enough to even know her as both. Wife, Daughter, sister, friend, Soldier, veteran. Lover of all animals, and ever the comedienne. Like a diamond that shines so vibrantly, she was every one of these perfect facets. And as she turned and cast and refracted that endless light that shone from within her, yet more beautiful and perfect facets emerged, casting rays of this amazing radiance on everything and everyone around her. Sammy, like the perfect diamond, was a singularity. A soul way too big for her mortal body, a soul that burned with the fierce energy of a million angry suns, a smile that would eclipse the light of all of them, and a temper that would make them pale in comparison. Sammy and her old truck and her ever present companion dogs Mini or BBJ. While animals love unconditionally, they don't love easily. Slow to accept but even slower to let go, they were drawn to Sammy, as they maybe saw these same values in her.

Big Sister Dale who she loved and worshipped, but never to her face. Who she would talk for because she felt she needed to and she could do it so well.

Sammy talking constantly of Bob and Sarah.

Sarah, her perfect mother, her guide, her spirit guide, her role model and her hero.

Bob, the man by which all others were measured, and found lacking. The man who showed her what a dad was and what a father (he was apparently the gold standard of both) was and she would gladly explain the virtues of both to any that would listen.

Sammy, the wife of Jay, and mother of Aiden and Abigail (I imagine if they had kept having kids she would have gotten to the Bs at some point, in a typical, whimsical, Sammy fashion) Sammy the perfect wife. Not in the modern Adderall driven vegan hipster sense, but in the very real traditional sense that great nations are built on. Truly her mother's daughter in that regard, she was the type of woman that they don't make anymore, the type that crossed the Bering strait, kids in tow. The type that when men went off to fight the Gauls or Huns or Mongol hoards, they could be sure that the homestead they left and came back to would be better than they left it.

Sammy and Bert, her ever present "uncle," her safety net that opened the whole world to her vibrant mind, of history and geography and heroes and villains and forlorn hopes and endless possibilities of being.

Sammy would never just walk into a room, and she was never out of her element. She would sweep in like a scirocco, or a tropical depression, creating her own environment around her, an immediate friend to all, and confidant of many, but still perfectly happy by herself with her faithful pup.

A quote from blade runner, originally credited to Lao Tzu, "the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long", and so it was with Sammy. If every moment dies its own eternal death to make room for the next, then every moment lives forever, if we just have the right telescope and know where to look. And such it is with Sammy, that bright radiance will live on the bright burning ember of a million memories, as a million extinct stars still light up our night sky. That radiance, that light will live on long after the pain and a darkness and vacuum of her passing has left us. And every time we talk and think of Sammy, laughter and smiles will slowly replace tears and that light she left behind will light the way for those who she left behind.

As Sammy would have wanted.