I will miss your kindness, and your courage.  I will also remember you as determined and dedicated, someone who set goals and achieved them all.  When I was 26, I was in my first year in college- you had already completed your Masters and earned an RD.

You were my first, and I think only, friend from Kansas- you exemplified all that is good about Midwestern values-  Friendly, sincere, helpful, kind to animals and strangers, and a believer in the power of positive thinking.

But Life is a mystery, and the human heart is a mystery too.  We who knew you here are so very sorry that your struggle was too great to bear.  My heart tells me that you are in a better place, and the sadness we feel is truly for our loss, not for yours.  God bless and keep you, Heidi, I will see your beautiful spirit in Hawaii's rainbows, and when I am walking the mountains I will hear you laughter in the wind.

I want to close with a quote from Kahlil Gibran, taken from his book, Sand and Foam:

"Once I said to a poet, 'we shall not know your worth until you die'.  And he answered, saying, 'yes, death is always the revealer.  And if indeed you would know my worth it is that I have more in my heart than upon my tongue, and more in my desire than in my hand.'