Lindsay's Voice- Words From Heather's Cousin

She wasn’t just some story in the paper. She was a friend, a cousin, a grandchild, a daughter, a mother. She was someone’s hero, savior, and comfort when their own ends seemed to fray. She wasn’t just front page news. She was a dreamer. Like the John Lennon song. The smallest pieces of her had ambition. She knew what fear was but chose to ignore it and she was adored all her life. People always said she looked like she walked right out of a magazine but her beauty rooted so much deeper than that.

Now that she’s gone the world seems to turn a little bit slower, the sun seems a little bit farther out in the sky, and flowers seem to wilt a little bit faster. I feel bad for these faces that never got to know hers. I feel bad for these people who never got to feel her smile. Because that’s what kind of person she was. A person who made you feel. The kind of person everyone wanted to be around.

I’ve heard a quote it went something like this: “People always get what they deserve.” How false could that be. The world wasn’t ready for Heather to be taken away.
You see that now? Everything is different. 

It’s almost as if the clouds cry too. The whole world is suffering from what it inevitably needed. No longer can it feel the bare foot steps of her walking in the summer. No longer can it hear the laughter of her daughters jumping into her arms. No longer can the sun caress her delicate golden hair. 

Night seems darker and colder now. The cold seems more bitter and silence seems more unbearable. But not all is bad. Like a name carved into a tree or a bike tire in wet cement. It will lay there forever just as Heather will be in all of us. 

Like a hand print in the sand that may wash away but the tide still remembers to come back for more. So often do we fear forgetting when we have known it all along, how impossible it is to forget something that is a part of all of us. We are the bark for which she carved. We are the wet cement for which she molded. 

We are the tide that will never forget. Many speak of her coming back but I for one have believed it all along. ...She never left. -Lindsay