I thought about it. I really did. What would I have said if I’d taken the chance and spoken at the candlelight vigil? Something like this.

“Hello. I’m Lily, Adriane’s cousin. Yeah...sorry to confuse you with my name. I can’t even say that I had it first. Anyway…Trust me. This is the last thing I expected to do tonight. But I’ve been thinking about this all night, so I thought I might try and share it with you.

“Seeing all of you here makes me… I don’t know. It’s such a contradiction; it doesn’t make sense. It makes me happy to see all of you here. It tells me you love these two wonderful, beautiful, outstanding girls. And I know that they must have loved you. The support that you all have shown is just… I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it.

“But then again, I feel sad. I see all of you here; I see your grief in front of me. And I know, I know with every fiber of my being, that neither Adriane nor Leslie would EVER wish this on ANYone. Not even on a worst enemy (and I say this highly doubting that either of them would ever call a fellow human being an enemy). I know Adriane would always want her friends, family, and community to be happy, and what little I know of Leslie tells me that she would, too. I wish I could do that for you. I wish I could make everyone happy again, take away all of the grief and pain and make it all better.

“But I can’t. And that’s ok. Our grief is ours and ours alone. No one can take it from us. No one. And that’s ok, too. Because that means that no one can ever take our love of them away from us either. We will always have this sadness inside of us, but so too will we forever have this love.

“I was also thinking about these candles. I’m sure it’s not the first time they’ve been used as a metaphor for a human life. It seems like a good one to me. We are drawn to this dancing little flame; we are captured by its mesmerizing beauty. And yet… It’s so easily lost. An errant gust of wind, and the flame is gone forever. Sure, we try to shield the light as best we can, but the flame will go out eventually. Even if we managed to protect it from the winds of a hurricane, the wick, the wax…they will burn down to nothing. That’s the way it goes.

“But that’s ok. Imagine, a person alone in never ending dark. And then imagine this little candle. No matter how long it lasts, no matter how long ago it was lit, that flame will essentially last forever. Once you’ve been touched by this light, you can never forget.

“And so we will never forget. We can’t. Because we love them.

“Thank you.”

I miss you, Adriane, and wish I had a thousand more life times to know you. But I can’t, and I will always be grateful for what little time I had. I am glad to call you cousin, and proud to call you friend.