She Gave Up Everything for Me

At her funeral, I stood before the crowd, my voice shaking. “I once told my sister she was a nobody,” I said. “But she was the greatest somebody I will ever know. She raised me when she was barely grown herself. She gave me a future at the cost of her own. Every life I save is because of her. She was my mother, my sister, my hero.”

The silence that followed was heavy with reverence.

And in that moment, I learned something I will carry forever:

Ladders mean nothing if you forget who held them steady while you climbed.