A family remembers

Caring, confident and courageous, Brianna Gregory used her 12 years of life to touch the lives of others -- making them happy and putting smiles on their faces. After meeting her, you never would have guessed she was fighting a battle with cystic fibrosis.

Brianna, a seventh-grader at Colony Middle School, passed away June 11, a day before her 13th birthday, at Providence Children's Hospital. Her memory will live on in the ways she helped others, her family said.

"She was an amazing little girl, that's for sure," her father, Neil Moss, said. "She sure did touch a lot of lives."

Brianna kept a journal in which each page was dedicated to a different person in her life, from her parents and siblings all the way to the nurses in the hospital. On each page, she wrote about why she loved that person, and how that person affected her life.

"It is pretty powerful," her mother, Lorinda Gregory, said. "At her service, a lot of people were reading from it. She wanted everyone to know she loved them."

Last April, Brianna zipped through the Valley in a limousine, heading to Anchorage with two friends for a weekend of shopping as part of the Wish Upon the North Star program. The trip was exactly who Brianna was as a person, her dad said -- a confident young girl with a bubbly personality, eager to share her life experiences with her two best friends.

"She had a ball that weekend," Moss recalled. "She was always one for liking attention."

Throughout her fight with cystic fibrosis, Brianna remained confident and caring. Her outgoing ways never ceased, and her positive attitude could only rub off on others.

"In spite of all that she had to endure during a lifetime of illness, she was compassionate, she loved babies and loved her family," her parents wrote in her obituary. "She touched hundreds of people's hearts."

Brianna enjoyed writing, painting, shopping, horses and shooting. She and her family hunted, and she enjoyed that time together, her family said.

Last Sunday, the Great Strides Walk, to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, was held in Anchorage. The event raised more than $44,000, and it was dedicated to the memory of Brianna Gregory, who passed away three days before the event.

The family asks that memorial donations can be sent to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation of Alaska. Brianna herself had a message to those battling the disease.

"My suggestion to you if you have CF is to live and enjoy life while you can. Do things with your family and friends while you still can," Brianna wrote on Nov. 24, 2002. "Another thing, don't give up on the fight. Because some day, there will be a cure.

"Like I said life's too short. Go live it," she wrote.