First I want to say a big thank you to all who loved Kelly. For to know her was to love her. From the first smile your heart was gone.
Kelly was my angel. She gave me a reason to love life. She loved everyone and knew no stranger. We got to go to the AS conference in 1998. My biggest memory of that trip was me and my parents talking to another family and realizing that Kelly had gotten away from us. We turned to see her sitting on some ladies lap (a grandparent I believe), she said Kelly just walked over and climbed up in her lap. That’s who Kelly was. She loved you unconditionally.
Eating was her favorite thing to do. The only thing that even came close to being liked as much as food was some one singing to her. She loved any and all music and would smile no matter what (or how badly) you sang to her. She could feed herself finger foods. She didn’t like using spoons or forks, they simply took to long. She drank mostly from spill proof cups. She could drink from a straw and a regular cup. However after she got a few drinks she liked to throw her cup, so we stuck with the spill proof kind.
Kelly’s favorite color was red. Everything had to be red or the brightest color we could get. If it did not make noise or light up she would not play with it. The only other things she would play with was books (she would flip pages of a magazine for hours) or a mirror. She would spend hours looking in a mirror and just laughing. She had the most beautiful smile and the most joyous laugh I will ever hear.
For twelve years she fought to beat everything the doctors said about her. In the end she beat them all. First they said she would probably be blind. She saw quiet well, but was put in glasses (which she hated, and would take off and throw) at age eight because they believed she was having problems focusing. Second they said the first case of pneumonia she got we would lose her. The first four year she had lots of breathing problems from pneumonia to RSV, after that her breathing problems seemed to simply vanish. Third they said she would never walk. After much, much, much work she started walking shortly after she turned four. Fourth they said she would never talk. While she did not talk much she did say a few words. They were no, dad, and mom (which was her first and most used word). Last they said she would be lucky to live to be two, and take her home and enjoy every minute we had with her. She beat that by ten years and five days. As for taking her home and enjoying her, we did but I do wish I would not have let so many of the minutes I had with her be wasted.
Very privileged to have been Kelly’s mother,
Stacey Gantt
