We’re raising funds to bring our precious baby sister closer to family and give her the peaceful, dignified resting place she deserves. This is my baby sister’s story that has never been shared publicly…

My name is Brittany Boatwright, and I am the oldest of three sisters. Our middle sister, Kelsey, was one year older than our youngest sister, Tanya. I was six years old when Tanya was born, and the moment I held her, she became mine to love and protect. I made her bottles, fed her, changed her diapers, bathed her, sang to her, and rocked her to sleep. In a home where our parents were neglectful and could not be counted on, I became the one who showed up for her and every single day of her short life. I taught myself to use the stove so I could cook for Kelsey too, who was only one at the time, and I gave both of my sisters every ounce of love a six-year-old had to give, because someone had to.

Tanya died at one month and eighteen days old, at our residence. I had spent the night at our grandparent's house, and she passed away while I was gone, less than twenty-four hours after I had left. That single night has followed me for twenty-seven years. I was six years old, but I have never stopped believing that if I had been there, I could have saved her. That belief has shaped the person I became, someone who protects fiercely, loves without holding back, and refuses to let the people she loves be forgotten. I still carry crippling guilt to this day for not being there that night.

In the aftermath of her death, and because of other deaths that occurred within a short span of time, Kelsey and I were removed from our home and placed into foster care in 1999. I believe my first-grade teacher was the mandated reporter, because I had spoken about the deaths, especially Tanya's, out of sheer devastation. Even at six, her loss was the thing I could not stay silent about. I was pulled from class, met by a social worker in the guidance counselor's office, and taken to the Department of Human Resources, where Kelsey was brought to join me. We waited for hours before a placement was found, late into the night. I continued to protect and care for Kelsey the way I always had, but I could not shield her from everything. I witnessed cruelty toward her as a helpless one-year-old, and I felt powerless and angry. We were moved between multiple placements, including relatives.

Our mother regained custody in May 2002 and lost it again within two months, for reasons that were never explained to us. We were placed back with our previous foster family and were ultimately adopted on September 24, 2004. Both of our birth parents are now deceased. Throughout our childhood, and even into adulthood, Kelsey and I did not have access to information about our biological family. But not knowing where Tanya was buried never meant we stopped carrying her with us. I have thought about her every single day for twenty-seven years. I think about who she would have become, what her laugh might have sounded like, what it would have felt like to watch her grow up alongside us. She was never a distant memory. She has been a constant presence in my life, in Kelsey's life, and in the lives of the nieces and nephews who never got to meet her but have grown up knowing her name and her story. It was only recent that I finally learned where Tanya is buried.

Kelsey and I went immediately to her grave at Highland Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Bessemer, Alabama. Twenty-seven years of waiting led us to a patch of ground with no marker, no headstone, and no trace that a little girl who was loved this much had ever existed. Her resting place was covered in dirt, dead grass, and trash, which Kelsey and I had to clear away by hand, on our knees, in the place where our baby sister has lain forgotten for almost three decades. It was one of the most devastating moments, and it was also the moment we knew, without question, that we were not leaving her there.

She is buried among relatives who were, for the most part, abusive and unkind people who failed her in life and have now failed her in death as well. Tanya deserves so much more than to spend eternity surrounded by the very people who never protected her, when Kelsey and I have spent our whole lives wishing we could have. After that visit, we contacted the funeral home that had originally handled her services in 1999. The funeral director went out of his way to locate her records and met with Kelsey and me to discuss the files they had for her services and we discussed disinterment and possible cremation or the option of moving Tanya to a cemetery closer to her sisters and to the nieces and nephews who talk about her, who ask about her, and who deserve a real place to visit and remember her, my five children and my sister's two children.

Our hope is to bring her near our family, where she can finally be visited, honored, and cared for the way she should have been all along. The funeral director has graciously offered with the process of what goes along with the process on his end. Only last week on August 27, 2026, we learned the real reason our mother lost custody of us for the second time in July of 2002- she was connected to a horrific crime during the period she had custody of us, though Kelsey and I were not present when the crime occurred. It was at the home we laid our heads down in prior to the horrific and tragic crime that occurred there. For years we had questions but no answers.

Learning the truth was devastating, but it also made one thing clearer than ever. Tanya was innocent in all of it. She never had a say in the family she was born into or the way her short life ended, and she has had no say in the twenty-seven years since, while she has lain unmarked beside people who brought nothing but harm. Kelsey and I are the only ones left who can speak for her now, and we intend to. I did not want that to happen even then, but now that we know the truth about our mother, I am even more determined to give Tanya a resting place that finally reflects how deeply she is loved: private, protected, and close to the family who has never once stopped thinking of her. Because our adoption took place years after Tanya's death, Kelsey and I are her legal next of kin and the decision-makers on her behalf.

This is not just a legal responsibility to us — it is the last thing we can ever do for our baby sister, and we intend to do it right. I have five children, and I am married to a permanently and totally disabled United States Marine Corps combat veteran who is unable to work due to service-connected injuries. I have been a stay-at-home mother and a student, on and off, for several years. My sister Kelsey has children of her own as well. Neither of us have much to give financially, but what we do have is twenty-seven years of love for a sister we barely got to know and have never once let go of. That love is why we have not stopped searching, why we knelt in the dirt to clear her grave with our own hands, and why we are asking for help now. We have not yet been able to begin the process with Highland Memorial Gardens because of the cost, which we are unsure we can cover between the disinterment, transportation, permits, and reburial/crematory expenses.

Kelsey and I have discussed the possible avenues available to us. Based on estimate expenses, the cost of disinterment, transportation, permits, and reburial at the cemetery in Jasper, or cremation if it is an option is expected to range from approximately $3,500 to $7,500 or more, and that figure does not yet include a headstone or marker, which will be an additional expense on top of the relocation itself.

After twenty-seven years without so much as her name marked anywhere, giving her a permanent marker matters to us as much as bringing her home does. What we are asking for is the chance to finally give Tanya what she has always deserved- a marked grave, a place of dignity, and a family close by who will visit her, bring her flowers, and make sure she is never forgotten again. She only had one month and eighteen days with us, but she has had twenty-seven years in our hearts, and she will have a lifetime more. Helping us bring her home is helping us finally become, in death, the protectors we could not fully be for her in life. Thank you for taking the time to read Tanya's story.

"She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare to her."

With gratitude,

Brittany Boatwright