Eulogy

      Gabriella was born on October 14, 1994 on a rainy fall day. At a premature weight of two pounds and two ounces, Gabby was placed in an incubator with fears that being born exactly two months early would cause her lungs to fail or other problems later in life. Those problems never surfaced. She was a happy child, but she wasn't a handful. Starting from her days in preschool, she was quiet, friendly, did what teachers asked of her and by 2nd grade her mother decided to put her into the gifted program. In her young, adolescent years Gabby was an avid reader. In class when others were reading Junie B. Jones, Gabby was submerging her eight-year old mind in the stories of Harry Potter. In addition to her passion for reading she had a deeper passion for dance. Her parents claim that when Gabby learned to walk she always walked on her toes and they took that as an indicator to enroll her in dance classes. At at four she took her first class at Mayfair Academy where she trained up until she was sixteen.
       As she grew older and transitioned into high school, her passion for reading died down but her love for dance did not. She became a dedicated member of the school's dance company Guys & Dolls and remained dedicated even though her enrollment in other dance studios changed and changed. One day something clicked for her and she realized that dancing was something she wanted to do for the rest of her life. Maybe it had something to do with the time she had a cast put on her foot but still managed to dance at a game her team worked so hard on. Maybe it was the time she developed a terrible knee injury a week before the GnD show and she was determined to dance through the pain, just because she couldn't let her team down. They were her family. Her dance family was just as important to her as her family at home. Like with her younger sister at home, her dance sisters fought, but they always knew the loved each other and Gabby always tried to set the example.
       Overall, she was a compassionate person who made people laugh just by being herself. I'm not saying that everyone loved her, but she didn't leave this earth completely alone. We must remember her legacy.