On October 4th 1994, Hayley Rose Neumann came into the world.  She was greeted by her mom and dad, big brother Jeremy, age nine, and me, her super excited big sister, age 11.  My parents had tried for a long time to have another baby.  Hayley was a very wanted child, and we were all thrilled that mom was pregnant.  Hayley was definitely a blessing.

I was present at Hayley's birth.  I never left her side as the nurse cleaned her up and I stood guard at the nursery while mom rested, watching my baby sister sleep.  I was so excited to have a baby sister.  I loved her more then anything else.

Hayley and I always had a very special connection, being the only girls, even though we were 11 years a part.  Hayley was also very attached to her momma. She was breastfed and co slept with mom and dad.  As an infant she constantly wanted to be held, especially by mom. :o)

As a young toddler Hayley was a nut.  She was rambunctious, precocious, and definitely funny.  Quite a personality.  Mom bought Hayley a Little Tykes doll house when she was a year old.  Hayley used it as a climbing toy.  She was always sporting a bruise from something or another.  We would find her in the oddest places.  In the Tupperware cupboard rearranging everything, in the pantry eating cookies.  When she was almost two she called someone on the phone!  Just so you don't think it was like we weren't watching her, it was more like she was fast and with four people we sometimes thought that another person was watching her. We could step out of the room for a minute and bam!  Hayley was finding something to do.

Hayley was born with no hair.  She just had this little peach fuzz until when was nearly three years old.  She was also a tiny petite little thing.  When Hayley started talking she spoke in complete sentences.  Her first words were mama, dada, and puter (computer) and then she just took off talking up a storm!  You can imagine the looks we got from people when they saw this little bitty baby spouting off full sentences!  And in a house with two tweenagers Hayley learned some interesting lingo.  Like "wedgie" and "goon" and she knew how to work the CD player and turn on the computer.  One smart cookie.

We moved to a new house when Hayley was two and a half.  She moved into her own room then, but she still would crawl in bed with big ones because she loved to cuddle to sleep.  She also had a pacifier, and I remember her cute little voice saying my name with her "pire" in her mouth:  Zinzee.

We once discovered Hayley sitting on the counter in the counter in the kitchen shoving Hershey kisses in her mouth as fast as she could, and shoving the wrappers back in the jar!  She also had practically a million nicknames: Hayley Bell, Hayley Bean, Hayley Rosarini, Beanie Baby, Beanhead, Peanut, Peanut Butter and Jelly, Noodle, Spark-plug, Snort...

Hayley was a tomboy. Despite the fact for the longest time she loved the color pink.  Pretty soon though pink moved away and her favorite color was "ornch".  When her hair started growing it was a mess of curls.  She hated it to be brushed.  Her favorite outfit was jeans and her WWJD t-shirt.  Mom had to buy her another one so we could make sure she had a clean one to wear on home school coop day.  Hayley wasn't too keen on having dolls, even though she had a few.  Her favorite toys were a stuffed gorilla and a buffalo.  They were her babies.  She dressed them up in baby jammies and fed them "milky" (nursing).  She did have one doll that she really liked, she named her Timothy. ;o)

Hayley loved to be with me and my friends.  When my best friend Becky would come over we would give Hayley a "beauty treatment" with a bubble bath, lotion, fingernail polish, brushed hair, and "make up" (I had a really pale pink blush that we put on her).  That was one of the only ways we could get her to take a bath and get her hair brushed.  Hayley loved Becky like she was her own sister.  When Becky came over for a meal Hayley's plate had to be touching Becky's.  It was too cute.  Hayley would come visit me in the mornings and needed to get her makeup done.  I love her.  And so did many others.

In August 1998, a few months before Hayley turned four we adopted Raina and Corey.  They were 9 and 5 at the time.  Despite the fact that Hayley was the youngest she still ruled the roost.  She led those two around by the nose, and loved them to pieces.  It was a bit of a difficult time for Hayley.  Lots of "No Fairs" were heard then.  But Hayley soon adjusted.  After about 9 months we started to come into form, and feel like a real family.

Saturday May 1st, 1999, Dad, Jeremy, and I were at a rehearsal for an evangelistic drama called "Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames."  Dad was playing the Devil, I was a demon, and Jeremy was a non Christian who died and went to Hell.  It’s a very very powerful drama, if you've ever seen it you know what I mean.  At the rehearsal we spent a lot of time praying, and my dad shared that he felt that Satan was really trying to attack our family.  We prayed against it and continued with our rehearsal.  Our first performance was that next Sunday night.

Hayley, Corey, and Raina spent the day playing in the sprinkler and jumping on our trampoline.  That evening we had a barbecue, steak and corn on the cob.  Hayley loved corn on the cob and ate a ton.  Mom and Dad knew Hayley was going to have a tummy ache later.  About an hour or so after bed time, sure enough Hayley came downstairs complaining of a tummy ache.  Yup, thought Mom and Dad, its the corn.

But shortly Hayley began throwing up, and they thought it was the flu.  Poor Hayley had a rough night, and Dad came into my room before it was time to get up for church on Sunday morning saying we were going to skip church because Hayley was sick all night, but we'd go to our rehearsal later.  I remember thinking, if only I had passed my drivers test a couple weeks before I could have taken Jeremy, Raina and Corey to church that morning.  Well I decided to try and catch some more sleep then.  While I was falling asleep I heard mom scream my dads name.  Raina, who was up with mom down stairs, flew up the stairs and open my door telling me something was wrong.  I ran down the stairs to see Hayley in my moms arm completely still and not breathing.  I screamed.

Turns out my parents were just planning to go into the ER because Hayley hadn't been able to keep anything down all night and they thought she was dehydrated.  Dad was in the shower when Hayley stopped breathing in my mother’s arms.  We called 911.  The paramedics came, we kids sat upstairs praying and crying as they tried to revive Hayley.  I remember sitting at the top of the stairs, praying with absolute faith that Hayley would start breathing again.  They took her by ambulance to the hospital and Dad took us kids following behind in the van.

We children waited in the waiting room while Mom and Dad and Hayley were back with the doctors.  Soon they called us children into a small room.  Mom told us.  Hayley didn't make it.  At that moment my life fell apart.

Hayley died from a twisted bowel.  Her intestines twisted upon each other two and a half times.  This is fatal after 10 minutes from the twist.  The body begins to shut itself down and about 12 hours later the person dies.  At the time of the initial twist Hayley only complained of a tummy ache.  This condition is extremely rare.  The county coroner told us that she had only heard of 3 other cases in the United States.  My parents asked what if we brought her in to the ER earlier in the night, they said they would have sent us home, thinking it was the flu.

We look back on that night, and we can see God's hand.  We know He didn't cause her death, even though he allowed it.  Hayley died in her moms arms with her family around her, not in an ER room with a bunch of strange people hooked up to tubes.  The poor baby would have been terrified.

Life after Hayley’s death was hard. Grieving was terrible. We did have a lovely memorial service for her though. It was beautiful.

Looking back on Hayley’s life its terribly hard to understand why God would allow a perfectly healthy beautiful little girl, loved by so many to die. I still don’t know why. I do know that as a result of Hayley’s death people have accepted Christ. My grandfather being one of them. He went to join Hayley a year later.

I still miss Hayley. I wish she were still alive so much. Sometimes I wonder if she knew. If she knew she was only going to be here for a short while. The last couple weeks of her life Hayley had a favorite song. My dad had just bought a new CD that we all loved, and one of Hayley’s favorites from it was Happy Little Corner. The words of that song say: Everyday I leave behind a piece of me that I may never find again. So today I’ll give you the best of me, ‘cause we never know when we might see the end of our time together. Every minute with you means more to me, then all of the gold I’ll ever see. And our memories will forever and always be in a happy little corner of my heart.

Even though Hayley’s version said she left behind a piece of meat :oP , I treasure the meaning of that song. And I keep all my memories of Hayley in a happy little corner of my heart. And I look forward to the day that I will see her again, in heaven.