Tomorrow is the big day! Tomorrow is the day that we celebrate Leslie's life. That we let her know how much she means to all of us.

She is really struggling with depression right now. She desperately wants her life back to normal. She misses the classroom. She misses normalcy. Her biggest worry right now are finances.

My sister has worked her entire life. She started as a dishwasher at the 1897 Smokehouse when she was 14 years old. She did that for like, FOREVER. She loved that job and the people she worked with. They equally loved her. She got me a job there, too, when I was roughly the same age and I lasted, oh, maybe about 30 seconds?

She stayed there for quite a while. All through high school, if I remember correctly. When she graduated from high school in 1998, she attended Wayne State as a full time student. She then got a job at City Hall. In true Leslie style, she loved that job, too, and was very committed to it. She was a great employee. She eventually got her bachelor degree from Wayne state in education. Her major was in English, her minor in Spanish. Right before she graduated, she took a semester off to travel to Spain to study Spanish over there. She loved that trip and she has always vowed to go back.

As most people know nowadays, she didn't get her first real teaching job right off the bat. There weren't any positions available. She ended up working at an elementary school in Wyandotte, McKinley, as their media specialist (fancy name for librarian/computer teacher) and this, I believe, is where she found her passion. She loved working there, and she loved being in the library, which is why she didn't waste one second going back to school for her Master's in library science. She eventually got a job on the weekends at Henry Ford Community College working in their library. During the week, she worked at McKinley. When McKinley closed a few years ago, she got a position in Brownstown doing essentially the same thing, she just traveled to all of their elementary schools.

She LOVED her job. She loved the children, and she loved her coworkers. She was good at it. She never wanted children of her own, but she had such a way with them, I would frequently go to her for advice when it came to my kids.

The last position she had was teaching 7th grade Spanish. She was very nervous about it. I was very nervous for her. She was used to really little ones. I was afraid this age group would be difficult for her. When she started, she INSTANTLY fell in love with it. She had just posted on her own facebook page just before September 20 how much she was enjoying it.

She was so good at her job. She was such a loyal, faithful employee, no matter what position she had. She was always thankful to just have a job.

Every single day she talks about how much she misses it and how much she wants to go back. Every. single. day.

Someday, Les. For now, let's just focus on YOU.