In a prominent place in a cemetery in the next closest town, is a 9/11 memorial to a North Dakota daughter who was employed and perished in the World Trade Center. That town will never forget. North Dakota will never forget. Texas will never forget. Our nation will never forget, nor will the world.
Our own daughter, Heather, also left this world on 9/11, but the year was 1996. Eighteen years ago. She was 18 years old. She has been gone as long as she was here. Cystic Fibrosis took her much to young, but we got to keep her longer than we ever imagined when she was diagnosed at birth.
We will never forget her dreams and hopes and plans. We'll never forget those mischievous eyes cutting over at us or her easy laugh. We'll never forget how everything held in her hands became animated at her bidding, even when she was 18. And we wish her niece and nephew could have played silverware puppets with her at the dinner table.
We'll never forget her dolls and tea parties and stuffed animals with IV's in their puffy little arms and oxygen tubes taped to their button noses. We'll never forget that her doctor called her "Heather Feather". I remember that one time she said that she didn't really want God to heal her because that would mean she couldn't go to "CF Camp" anymore. She loved that camp.
We'll never forget that she loved and worked with our little community theater for 5 years. We'll never forget that she drove a little sport car with a handicapped tag in the window, and she had a scholarship and had started her college classes. We'll never forget that she studied art and left us a portfolio full of framable masterpieces. We'll never forget that she thought it was better her than her sister have that disease.
Maybe we'll have a footlong cheese coney from Sonic, or a dip of Blue Bell Rainbow Sherbert, or a Victoria's filet from Outback in her memory. Or maybe we'll just remember,
because we will never forget.
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