Woman adopted as a girl dies days after reuniting with long-lost sister
After two sisters were separated by circumstance, fate brought them back together - and then cruelly tore them apart again.
Iowa woman Paige Hough was 16 when her younger sister Megan was put up for adoption at the age of six, KETV reports.
Paige was devastated, calling Megan's move away from the family home "one of the hardest days of my life".
"I helped take care of her, I changed her, I took her to school, I taught her how to write her name, helped her do her homework," she told KETV.
"She was my life. She is my everything."
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The courts ruled that the two sisters could only reunite when Megan, who now lived with the Klindt family, turned 18.
But fate was to bring them together sooner than that.
An eagle-eyed cousin spotted Megan at a local shopping centre, took a quick photo of her and sent a text to Paige, who came rushing down to the shopping centre straight away.
"We were crying and she hugged me and it was the best thing that every happened," Paige told KETV.
With the Klindt family's blessing, the sisters, who had not seen each other for some time, tentatively began renewing their relationship.
Megan invited Paige to her 16th birthday on December 2. But 10 days later, Megan was dead.
"I talked with her the night before," Paige said. "This is so hard."
Tragically, Megan died on December 12 when her school bus caught fire in Oakland.
Paige, who lost her father and grandmother at a young age, told KETV that her eventual reunion with her younger sister was "my happy ending that I waited for".
But it wasn't to be - and a tattoo that Paige got when Megan was still alive has now become both a symbol of sisterly love and a memorial to her loss.
"It was to help me get through struggles and to motivate me," Paige said.
"Now it's more of a remembrance tattoo and I didn't think it would get to this point."
