Hannah grew up in the city with her family: father, mother, and older sister.
Her dad was a factory worker at an auto plant her mother was a housewife until the girls
were old enough to go to school, then she took secretarial work. She and her sister had a
regular sibling love/hate relationship. Being close in age, they were only a year apart in
school. In spite of griping about her "pesky little sister" hanging around, Janet really
didn't mind all that much and included Hannah in just about everything she did.
During a kindergarten sing along, the school's music teacher noticed that Hannah had a very
good voice for a five year old. Her love of music and her sister's encouragement had her
singing in the church choir and later, in high school, in several musical productions put
on by the school. Her parents did not think there was much of a future in her singing and
after high school, they strongly advised (translation: forced) Hannah to go to college and
apply for nusring school. It served a double purpose for them as they felt they could keep
a closer eye on her if she stayed close to home.
Hannah fared better under the pressure put on by their parents than her sister did. Janet
developed a drug problem and Hannah did her best to see her through it. She seemed to be
the only one who could reach Janet at times. When the flu hit, Hannah was living at home
and working as a clerk in a convenience store while she attended a local college. She loved
her family and losing her parents wasn't easy, but losing her sister hit her the hardest.
It struck her as cruelly ironic that she had nursed her sister through a withdrawal and
gotten her on the road to recovery only to have her die from the flu. Since funeral home
services had come to a halt along with everything else, she buried her family in the
backyard and spent the better part of a month grieving her loss before moving on.
