**This was written by Sarah’s friend and Melting Pot manager, Rich Kearney. Hearing these words helped me see my sister through the eyes of the people who stood by her, day in and day out, never questioning her heart. They will always hold a special place in my heart, and I will be forever grateful to each and every member of her Melting Pot family for loving her as much as they did, even during her darkest days. Rich’s eulogy captured Sarah’s spirit in the most soul shatteringly beautiful way; he managed to shatter me and piece me back together again in the span of a reading, and I didn’t want to stop hugging him when he finished. There aren’t enough words to describe how thankful I am to him for this.**

Hello everyone…for those of you that don’t know me, my name is Rich, and I worked alongside Sarah at The Melting Pot for about 3 years. Now, before I really start, I just want to take a moment to thank every one of you who came here today. We’re not here ONLY to support one another while we grieve this devastating loss: but we’re also here to celebrate the life of a bright beautiful woman that left us sooner than we can understand. I knew Sarah very well, but I certainly don’t claim to know her better than everyone else in here, which is why I was honored but surprised when I was asked to give this eulogy. At first, I was afraid that I’d have no idea what to say to everyone, but before I knew it, I was afraid that I would end up going on and on and on. Sarah was a very well-rounded woman, with a lot of layers…and there is no shortage of words we can use to describe her. Sure we could use words like stubborn, late, or even troubled; But there’s no way you can try describing Sarah without using words like hilarious, compassionate, confident, soulful, classy, gorgeous, wise…Hungry (haha)…hungry for popcorn. Being that Sarah hated clichés as much as I do, I think she’d appreciate me using this time to disprove an old cliché…it’s the one that says, “beauty is only skin deep”. That’s just not true for Sarah. For her, beauty may have begun on the skin, but it grew more and more intense the deeper you got to truly know her. No doubt, she had some of the wildest most beautiful blond hair you’d ever see…but, those who of us who were lucky enough would come to find that the most wildly beautiful part of her was her soul. And that soul of hers was the cradle of two of my favorite things about her…1, her awesome laugh, which I’m sure we could all hear in our heads if we were to think about it…and 2, that soul of hers was the source of a truly pitch-perfect singing voice that most of us at work were jealous of.

Now, I’ve talked a little about her wonderful soul…but it’s worth mentioning that you can’t have a wonderful beautiful soul without having this one thing…Wisdom. Sarah’s wisdom was the key ingredient to many of her friendships. At the restaurant where we worked together, the average age of the employees is somewhere around 22 years old. Sarah made friends everywhere she went, so it was only natural for her to become great friends with a lot of her younger co-workers, most of which are here today. Before writing this little speech, I took a little time to talk with some of those co-workers to see if there was anything they thought I should mention about her. And it’s funny, because even though I spoke to them all separately, they all eventually mentioned how WISE Sarah was…and how great her advice always was. Of course, 29 years old is young my most standards, and too young to leave this world by all standards…but in our line of work, 29 is old…29 is as old as dirt in our line of work…so Sarah became somewhat of an older sister to quite a few of our younger co-workers. She loved sharing her life experiences with them, and always took great care to help them avoid making any of the same mistakes that she’d made herself. Her advice always came straight from the heart, and that advice…it was NEVER given just so she could hear herself speak it. It was always genuine and full of insight and wisdom. We can speculate that she’d still be here if she was as good at taking her advice as she was at giving it, but that just wouldn’t have been Sarah’s style; because Sarah was ALWAYS so much more concerned with helping others than she ever was with helping herself…and while some might say that was her downfall, I think it was one of the most beautiful and envious things about her.

I know I’ve said quite a lot already, and I’m not a big enough fool to believe that any of you folks are really going to remember everything I’ve said about Sarah up here…but If nothing else, there’s one thing I’m going to tell you that I really sincerely hope that none of you forget…and that’s simply that Sarah loved each and every one of you! We’ll all struggle with questions about how we could have saved her from doing what she did, but the hard truth is that none of us could have stopped it, and none of us will truly understand why she did what she did…but that’s not important anymore. The important thing to do now is to remember all the awesome things about her that made her who she was, and also to remember that she had a huge heart…a heart so big that she was able to make room in there for every one of us. It’s now our obligation to find a permanent place for her to stay in OUR hearts, so that we’ll never forget all the beauty that her life graced us with.

Again, I want to thank all of you for coming here to help celebrate Sarah’s life, and to help lend support to those here that are most devastated by her passing. And as a reminder, if you’d like to show any sort of monetary support, Sarah’s family urges you to simply make a donation to the Delaware Humane Society, which is what is believed Sarah would have wanted.