A Letter for My Daughter

My sweet girl,

Sage Rae-Ann Hodge, you were born on August 17, 2014, at RUH in Saskatoon, and from the very beginning, you brought something unmistakably your own into this world. You were an incredible 11-year-old, and such a gifted artist, expressing yourself in ways that were thoughtful, creative, and uniquely you.

You are loved deeply by your brothers—Mason, Phoenix, Jasper, and Matthew—each of them holding their own special connection to you, each forever changed by your presence in their lives.

Today we gather in a way no parent ever imagines they will. We gather because your life mattered so deeply that it has rearranged us. We gather because love does not know what to do with itself when it has nowhere physical left to land. And we gather because even in grief, love insists on being spoken out loud.

I want to begin by saying your name—not as a ritual, but as a recognition. Saying your name still feels like calling you from another room. There’s a part of me that expects to hear your answer, your footsteps, your laugh, or that particular way you used to say “Mom” that carried a thousand meanings at once. Saying your name reminds me that you were never an idea or a story. You were a real person, with weight and warmth and opinions and humour and fire.

You were here. And because you were here, we are forever changed.

From the very beginning, there was something unmistakable about you. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just… present. You had a way of being fully yourself without asking permission. You felt things deeply. You noticed things others missed. You carried tenderness and strength in the same hands, and somehow neither cancelled the other out.

Our connection was never about words alone. It lived in glances, in long quiet moments, in shared humour, in the way we could sit together without needing to fill the space. There are bonds that don’t require explanation because they existed before language could catch up. Ours was like that. Low-key. Steady. Unshakeable. The kind that doesn’t perform, it simply is.

People talk about love as if it’s always gentle, but real love has weight to it. It has gravity. Loving you taught me that. You pulled me into the present moment again and again—whether I was ready or not. You reminded me what mattered when the world got loud or confusing. You anchored me simply by being you.

You also carried your own universe inside you. Not in a grand, showy way—but in the way you thought, the way you wondered, the way you questioned things quietly. You had your own inner sky. Sometimes stormy. Sometimes bright. Always real. You didn’t pretend your way through life. You felt your way through it.

That honesty was one of your greatest strengths, even when it made things harder.

I want to speak plainly today, because you deserved plain truth, not polished stories. You were not perfect—and you never needed to be. You were human. You struggled. You learned. You loved. You laughed. You got tired. You tried again. You carried more than people realized, and still found ways to be gentle with others.

There was a kindness in you that didn’t announce itself. It showed up in small choices. In the way you noticed people. In the way you cared without keeping score. In the way you loved without needing to be in control of how that love was received.

That kind of love leaves marks.

Losing you has felt like the sky changing without warning. The world looks the same, but it isn’t. Time moves, but differently now. There is a before and an after, and I live in both at once. Some days I feel your absence as silence. Other days I feel it as pressure in my chest. And sometimes—unexpectedly—I feel you as warmth. As memory. As presence.

I don’t need grand explanations for that. Love doesn’t disappear just because a body is gone. It changes form. It becomes memory. Influence. Echo. It becomes the way your name still softens my voice when I say it. The way I still talk to you without thinking. The way you continue to shape who I am becoming.

If there is anything celestial about our connection, it’s not about stars or symbols or stories. It’s about constancy. About the way some bonds orient us, like quiet landmarks we navigate by. You were that for me. You still are.

To you, my girl—if there is any place where words can still reach you, let this be what you hear:

You were loved without condition.You are missed beyond measure.You did not fail.You did not vanish.You mattered—immensely.

I will carry you with me, not as pain alone, but as proof that a love like ours existed at all. And that is something even death cannot undo.

Rest gently. You are safe. You are held. You are still my daughter.

I love you more than the sky remembers its first light, and more than there are stars in the sky.

Martens Warman Funeral Home is honoured to be entrusted with sweet Sage Rae-Ann Hodge's care and arrangements.