Amiri – I am suppose to speak about you, but what I want to do is speak to you. I want to tell you how proud of you we are. I want to tell you how many people you have touched. I want to tell you that I think of you every day. I want to tell you that we’ve all been recycling more, hiking more, and we all try to bike, carpool and use public transportation more. Did you know that mom stopped licking the drips from the salad dressing bottle and I’ve stopped laughing at my own jokes? We even all played ultimate the other day. (Truth is I didn’t actually play but I did those practice throws running around in circles like you taught me — you who played with me even though I sucked and made certain we tossed a frisbee in every green space in Munich we could find, you who dragged me to play in Englewood on Shabbos when I was a lump, you who tossed with me in Cambridge until we hit the car, you who taught me to throw over my head in Central Park.)
Amiri – We want you to know it’s been a terrible year, and as time passes its getting harder because you seem further and further away.
Amiri – we want to tell you that we miss you. We miss your crooked mischievous smile. We miss the way you bring your hands up by your chest when you giggle. We miss your Simpson inspired high-pitched laugh. We miss your interesting insights into everything. We miss your provocative questions. We miss reading your chicken scratch handwriting. We miss joining you in passionate discourse. We miss watching you do core stabilization exercises. We miss learning about your newfound ways to improve efficiency and increase knowledge – like your newfound habit of listening to books on tape while you jog or the note-taking shareware software you developed before your first semester at Stanford even started. We miss seeing you nap on the blue couch. We miss watching you play computer games. We also miss watching you erase the games from your computer so you wouldn’t be addicted but then going to Mikey’s to play anyway.
Amiri – we miss your ideas. We miss talking to you. We miss being loved by you. We miss you making us laugh.
Amiri – personally I need to tell you that I miss being your sister. I miss you sitting on my bed and pelting me with stuffed animals.
Amiri – I miss listening to your problems and giving you advice. I miss telling you my problems and getting your advice. I miss sharing insights about Mom, Dad, Uri. I miss you. We miss you.
Amiri – I want you to know that its true what they say – that when great people die – a little bit of each of us dies with them. Amiri – we are so much less without you. I miss you. I love you.