The Life of Sarah Elizabeth LeFoll

 

Composed by Zachary Spencer LeFoll

Read at Sarah's funeral by Daniel LeFoll

 

 

                  As I sit here in my apartment in Stavanger, Norway, I realize the task that lies before me.  I’ve surrounded myself with all my pictures of Sarah and letters from her or about her, anything I have that could flood my mind with memories of the sister I love.  Sarah and I have always been so much alike.  We’ve liked the same things and think a lot of the same thoughts.  Sarah liked to talk me up, telling people how good I was.  I can still remember how many times she referred to me as “Mr. Righteous” or “Wonder boy”.  The honest truth is that Sarah is the best…she always was and nothing could convince me otherwise.  She was so fun and crazy, always up for a good time and she loved us…loved us all so much.  I would go out on a limb and say that most if not all of the people who knew her and loved her would gladly have traded their lives for hers, knowing the love she had and the goodness that she added to the world.

            We all have memories of her, snapshots of time that illustrate her life through our eyes.  It is these snapshots that I’ve tried to gather to give us all something to hold on to.  There’s no particular order, just written as remembered by those in closest contact with her throughout her life.  There will be memories we all have…some written, some written in our hearts, but we will cherish them in every form.  I apologize in advance for the amount of memories written from my point of view, but I had to write from what I remember.

            I remember Sarah helping me to dress well so that I wouldn’t just throw on shorts and a T-shirt with a stupid logo on it and walk out the door, but to look stylish.  She also gave me a ton of “personal care” tips like making sure my eyebrows were well kept and shaving in the right direction and picking a cream-based aftershave instead of alcohol-based.  She told me she was training me to be a “metrosexual”.  She explained that it is basically a straight guy who takes care of himself and his apartment as well as a gay guy does.  I laughed pretty hard.

            On one occasion we decided to make a trip to the mall, so Sarah, Mike, Me, Danny and Rachel were all in the car and someone sneezed, so Danny says, “Oh, what’s that word…gadunty…gazunty…gajunty, that it, gajunty.”  Mike and Sarah were both like, “yup good job Dan…you got it right, it’s gajunty.” We all had a good laugh about it and still like to call each other Gajunty sometimes.

            I was with Sarah in the West and I borrowed her leather band bracelet with the two button snaps without asking.  When I took it off, she saw it and pretended to get mad at me, saying stuff like, “awww…look what you did, you bent it.” or “You mind as well just keep it now.”

            She would dye her hair all the time…brown to black to blonde to red and back again.  I liked it best brown with really blonde highlights, but I think she was partial to that deep auburnish red color.

            She used to give those big squeezy hugs.  She would even run and throw her arms around a neck till they couldn’t breathe.  She liked to jump at me in the air because she knew that I would always catch her and never let her fall.

            When Cal was a baby, he spent a long time just lying alongside Sarah on the couch.  We got pictures of it when they were both sleeping.

            When she and I would “co-baby-sit” the kids and mom wasn’t there for the usual bedtime routine, I would always just tell them to put their PJs on and I’d turn off the light, but Sarah would never let that fly when she was there.  She always read or sang to them and then tucked them in sweetly.  I thought it was too much, but now I know it was just right.

            We were younger and at Nana’s house, and when we got out of her van, I slammed the giant sliding door on Sarah’s fingers.  That was the only time in my life that nana ever got mad at me.  She thought Sarah would lose her hand or something, but she was fine.

            She got all dressed up and sung “Colors of the Wind” from the Disney movie “Pocahontas” in a concert when we were younger and there wasn’t a sister who was prettier or could sing better in the whole wide world than my sister could.  I always admired that she was the far better singer and everybody knew how good she was.  In my eyes, my sister was a star and she still is.

            She put on her white chamber choir gown and put white makeup on her face to be a ghost or something for Halloween and she would scare them at the door while I waited in a black shroud on the porch to scare them as they left…It was great.

            I also remember her singing in chamber choir and me getting the chance to sing with her a few times.  She had the prettiest voice I’ve ever known and I’ll always remember the times we sang together.

            She would move around the country, hardly ever staying in the same place for more than two months or so.

            She had this cackle laugh when her head would roll back and she would hold her hands on her stomach and bust out.  It almost sounded like a forced laugh, but it was real.  It was the laugh she would give right after making a crack at Rachel and getting a rise out of her.

            When we were in Newington High together we skipped a study hall and left through the music wing’s band room door to go get Subway and Dunkin’ Doughnuts in Steve Kenny’s car.

            Sarah and I went exploring in the woods behind our house in Haddam Neck and we found an old ambulance, station wagon style.  It looked exactly like the car from the movie Ghostbusters, hence the name “the Ghostbusters Car”.  We also found an old well and I think we even got a little lost.

            It was not easy having such a good-looking sister, because friends would always have to tell me how hot they thought she was right after they met her.

            Sarah used to protect Danny from the iron fist of my tyrannical rule.  When he used to bug me on purpose and I used to get really angry, there were a few times when I probably would have killed him, but Sarah would hold Danny behind her and hold her hands out to stop me from ending his “Lord of the Flies” existence.  I guess she always thought that Danny would be too important in this world for me to just arbitrarily send him out of it.  She always knew what Danny thought and felt…in a lot of ways they were kindred spirits.  She’ll be right there next to Danny as he grows up, to help him handle things he couldn’t handle alone, to avoid things that maybe she couldn’t, to be even better than she was.  I know that is what she wants for him and Sarah is not the type to just sit back and see what happens.  She’ll make sure he turns out just great.

            I helped Sarah write a song once called “Six Feet Underground” about a person who’s trying to fight against all the bad things that life throws at you and has to just climb and climb to keep from being buried.  Now Sarah has finally climbed out of the hole because her savior Jesus Christ himself reached His hand to save her.  For that, He has my life and my soul, my heart and my will for all the rest of eternity.

            Sarah really loved spicy food.  She loved hot sauces and when she was a kid, she would actually dip a tortilla chip in salsa just to suck the salsa juice off and dip the chip again.

            She brought me into the MTC.  She was looking so beautiful in her skirt and stuff and before we separated, I looked straight into her eyes and said, “be good while I’m gone, ok?” “You promise?”  She told me that she would and now she is being good, much better that me.

            I remember her singing the song from Charlotte’s Web the cartoon movie at the top of her lungs.  “Isn’t it greeeeaaaat, how I articulate?  Isn’t it Graaaaand, how you can understand?”

            She was so proud of me for being on a mission even though she had her questions about the gospel.  She told me a whole bunch of times in letters, e-mails, and on tape.  I know that now when she has all the knowledge that she has, she is even more proud of me.  Just since her death I have been here for a 23 year-old young man named James who really needed me.  We knew we had met before this life and there were no coincidences in the time and place we found each other.  Sarah wanted me to help him and before he met us he was less active in the church and in the last few days he has decided to get the Melchezidek priesthood and serve a mission.  I was there for him right when he was there for me and I wouldn’t have been there is Sarah hadn’t of told me to stay where I was.

            I really like SPAM…I mean I really like SPAM and so does Sarah.  She figured that I would “need” some in Norway so she has talked about sending me a giant box filled with cans of SPAM called “The SPAM Package of Love”.

            When Sarah was a baby, she used to swing in her little automatic swing and every time it swung foreword, mom would kiss her little toes and Sarah would giggle.  She thought that Sarah would get tired of it, but she just kept giggling.

            Mom, Sarah, and I all have the same freckle on the same toe of the same foot…we like to show it off.

            Caleb and Nathan remember when Sarah would lie in bed with them and read “Lemony Snicket’s: A Series of Unfortunate Events” to them.

            Rachel remembers being at the Mill Pond Park Extravaganza in Newington and her friend Katie convinced her to get on stage and sing karaoke.  She was up there and started to sing, “I hope you dance”, but she froze up and started to get really embarrassed.  Sarah turned and saw and without hesitation, she bolted for the stage and jumped up.  She started to sing next to her and saved Rachel’s day.  This is a great example of the love she had that we all knew about.  She would have done the same for the other people she loved.

            In our last house, Sarah and Rachel shared a room and Rachel had just hurt herself, so to cheer her up, Sarah grabbed a home designs magazine and started to draw stupid faces on all the people inside.

            In that same room, there would be nights where Rachel couldn’t fall asleep, so Sarah would describe a candy world to her with candy cane gates, chocolate buildings, marshmallow clouds, and all other kinds of sweet things.  When she was done describing it she would say, “ok Rachel, now you have to go to sleep to go to our candy world.  I’ll meet you there.”

            When Sarah came back from college, she would come home tired some nights and just flop onto the floor.  Even though Rachel was like two rooms away, she would yell, “Jaweeeenie, I need a backrub!”

            Danny remembers the bracelet she gave him once.  He also remembers one time when he was skiing and he kept falling down.  He was frustrated and tired and scared and Sarah helped him up and helped him to ski down the mountain.

            Daniel and I used my Creepy Crawlers oven to make little rubbery bugs that we put on Sarah and Rachel’s beds and when the pulled their covers back to go to sleep they freaked out.  Let’s just say that what followed was a whirlwind of slapping for them and pain for us, but we loved it.

            One day, Sarah, me, Rachel, and Danny were in our living room at our house on Florida Rd. and Sarah said there was a Llama in our yard.  We told her to cut it out, but it turned out that there was an actual Llama in the yard, eating mom’s plants, and we all thought it was the coolest thing ever.

            When Sarah was a baby, Nana would call her in from the living room in her house into the kitchen and Sarah would come scootching on all fours as fast as she could down the hall.  Nana picked her up and said, “You’re my little Scootch, aren’t you?”  She has called her Scootch ever since and Sarah loved it.

            Nana remembers making breakfast at her house for all of us, but Sarah was only two, so she was hungry and didn’t want to wait.  Nana offered her an apple that she had cut up, but Sarah looked at the apple pieces and said that she couldn’t eat it.  When Nana asked why, Sarah said, “I can’t eat that apple Nana…it has oxidation.”

            I was in High School, but I went to visit Sarah out at college and we memorized the words to “A Whole New World” so we could sing it with the parts of Aladdin and Jasmine.

            We used to talk about the rest of our lives.  She would always say how she wanted to work with me somehow, no matter what I did.  We even wanted to buy houses right next door to each other so we could grow to be old farts together.  Sarah will still grow old with me and one day we will still live right next door to each other.

            She always told me that if there were one person in the whole world that she would trust everything to, even her life, it would be me.  She told me almost everything.

            Everyone who ever met her can probably remember her smile, because as soon as she walked in, it lit up the entire room.  In every picture I have of her, she has on that huge smile.  We will always remember that smile and the laugh that turned a gloomy day into something worth remembering.

            Sarah finally saw the Broadway play, Wicked, after waiting quite a while for the date on the pre-ordered tickets and singing the whole soundtrack like a thousand times so the rest of us could probably sing it in our sleep.

            Sarah was a huge movie-buff.  She loved movies and even had a list of movies that Mike HAD to see.  She loved to play the game “movie vault” where you give her the names of two movie stars and she links them together through movies they’ve been in with co-stars, etc.  She was really good at it.

            She was terrified of driving.  She never really got the hang of it.  She was not the driver, but the driven…not the chauffeur, but the chauffeured.

            There was another thing in life that Sarah was really afraid of…they’re large, swim around, and have tons of very sharp teeth.  We loved to tease her by buying her shark key chains and stuff.

            Sarah was there when Nathan was born and came up with his first nickname of “Mr. Nakabee”.

            Nathan used to have this really poofy hair when he was a baby.  One time, mom saw the sun coming through his hair like a little halo, so she lay down to take the picture and had Sarah make him laugh.  Sarah got him to give a huge smile for the picture and if you look at his eyes in the picture, you can see the reflection of Sarah trying to make him giggle.

            Sarah loved to play a knock-knock joke with Caleb.  She would say “knock, knock”…”Who’s there?”…”Jamaican”…”Jamaican who?”…”Jamaican me crazy”.  Then, before he could say a thing, she would tilt her head back and give a huge cackling laugh.

            When Sarah and I were kids, Dad would bike us around in a little trailer and because it was so squished, I would fall asleep leaning up against my sister.

            Sarah had a love in her life…cheese, she really loved cheese…all kinds of cheese…lots of cheese…but she especially loved Smoked Gouda.  I thought it was nasty.

            She hammed it up in the play, “West Side Story” when she put on the pretty dress, created Maria’s Spanish accent, and pretended to see herself in a fake mirror as she danced around singing, “I feel pretty…oh so pretty.”

            We all remember the ski trip to Canada with the Puidas where we got to eat the French fries with the squeaky cheese and hot beef gravy…man did Sarah love that cheese.

            The week before Sarah’s baptism, she discovered that she could play a whole bunch of songs on a toy trumpet she got.  The true talent lied in the fact that she could play it with her nose.  She would waltz around, tootin’ the nose trumpet and laughing like it was the funniest, coolest idea ever.

            In closing, I hope that all these memories made everyone laugh and cry.  I wish I could be there to see you all and greet you with a smile and a warm thought.  All is not lost however, since I am the writer of this life sketch, I get certain privileges.  I get the chance to share the feelings of my heart with all of you.

            My sister was incredible…she is incredible.  Her life here was packed full of the lifting up of others, especially me.  Sarah was my best friend.  She was more precious to me than a thousand lifetimes.  I would have given anything for her and I know that she always knew that.  She lived her life as a shooting star…burning so brightly and all too soon extinguished, but now she exists as a permanent sun that burns as a light and reminder to us all.

            I close this earthly life of Sarah Elizabeth LeFoll by bearing my testimony that she lives…she lives still.  Not just as a web of memories in our finite minds, but as a soul immortal.  My sister Sarah is still my sister Sarah and will be forever.  I tell you all what I know…that she was brought home to the God that gave her life…that she has seen His loving face and heard His calming voice.  I no longer have to worry about her because she is in good hands.  I know in whom I have trusted and I will trust in Him forever.  I know with absolutely no doubt that my sister will be waiting for me with open arms in our homes above.  Our challenge now, if we can rise to it, is to live the rest of our lives worthy to join her.  Of these things I bear the most important witness of my life.  This testimony I leave with you all in the name of the only begotten of the father, the savior of the world and most importantly, my sister, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

 

--Elder Zachary Spencer LeFoll