Honoring a Sister's Legacy

In Honour of Susan — A Sister, A Promise, A Legacy That Lives

Some people enter your life not by accident, but by assignment.

They arrive and something in your spirit recognizes them before your mind can explain why. The relationship settles into your life not as an addition, but as a knowing. Susan was one of those people.

She was not just my friend.
She was my sister.

The kind of sisterhood that doesn’t require blood to be real. The kind that is chosen, God-placed, and deeply woven into your becoming. Susan was family to me in every sense that matters. We did life together, not on the surface, but in the deep places where truth lives.

Susan was meant to write in this space. She was meant to lend her voice, her heart, her wisdom to these pages. Instead, this page now holds her absence and the weight of loving someone whose presence shaped you.

Grief does not announce itself gently. It interrupts plans mid-sentence. It shatters the illusion that we are in control of timing. It forces us to sit with the unbearable truth that even the most God-sent relationships are not promised forever. Losing Susan has undone me in ways I am still learning how to name.

It has forced me to ask questions I wasn’t prepared for about faith, about obedience, about why love can feel so expansive and so devastating at the same time. It has brought me to my knees, not in poetic surrender, but in raw, human disbelief.

And yet, even in this pain, one truth has risen above the noise:

Legacy is not only what we build.
It is how we love.

Susan’s legacy does not end here. It is not confined to unfinished plans, unwritten words, or the future we thought we had time to complete together. Her legacy lives in who she was and how she showed up.

It lives in the way she loved fiercely and intentionally.
In the way she made people feel safe, affirmed, and deeply seen.
In the way she mothered with devotion and strength.

And it lives most powerfully in her daughter.

Kyra, my niece, this part is for you.

You may read this one day, and I want you to know this truth without question: you are not alone in this world. You never will be. I am here. Always.

No matter where life takes you, no matter how far you roam, Aunty will always be here to shelter you, to pour into you, to remind you of who you are and where you come from. I promise to love you with the same intentionality your mother loved others, with patience, honesty, and protection.

Sue, I promise you this:
I will love and care for Kyra with every last breath in me.

Grief leaves a void that cannot be filled. But it also leaves a responsibility, the responsibility to live differently because love has touched us deeply.

To love louder.
To show up sooner.
To stop postponing connection.

Honoring Susan means carrying forward what she embodied, not perfectly, but faithfully. It means letting her life change the way I live mine. It means choosing presence over delay, truth over comfort, and love over fear.

Some people never truly leave us.

They become part of how we move through the world.
Part of how we love others.
Part of how we keep going when our hearts are breaking.

Susan lives on in me, in how I love, in how I lead, and in the promises I keep.

This is not goodbye.
This is a vow.