My Words at Heather's Funeral

Words About Heather

Thank you each for being here. All of you are celebrating Heather’s life with us because you each, in your own way, traveled through this journey with her. You prayed for her, cried over her, empowered her or been empowered by her. You showered Heather with the kind of love that sustained her spirit and we thank you. And so I want to share with you a couple of thoughts on behalf of the Gardner and Starcher families.

You each know the courage and faith Heather demonstrated throughout her fight over the past year and a half. We take comfort in this and also in the belief that Heather did not have to physically conquer her illness to beat it. Heather overcame this disease time and time again with each challenge she faced. Oh yes, we saw Heather beat this disease.

We saw her beat it in the way she steeled herself when finding out her diagnosis. We saw her beat it with her reaction to finding out she would not be able to conceive – "we’ll adopt". We saw her beat it when she went to work at the same time she took chemo and
radiation. We saw her beat it in the way she rebounded after finding out it spread. And we saw her beat it each time she put in her Billy Bob teeth to make someone laugh.

Heather’s spirit did more than beat this disease, it destroyed it.

Heather felt all would be worthwhile if a miracle was born out of her challenges and suffering. We saw many miracles amid all the pain.

We saw a miracle in people coming back into the church or finding faith where they did not think they had any. We saw a miracle in the hundreds and hundreds of people praying daily for Heather. We saw a miracle in family members finding each other again or strengthening their bonds. We saw a miracle in Heather’s medical professionals taking strength in the unique way she approached her disease. And we saw a miracle in people becoming more educated on and active in the fight against breast cancer.

Heather’s faith was the foundation of her spirit and to witness these and other miracles is to see through the heartache to the beauty in Heather’s experience. Take your example for faithfulness from Heather. Each day, she held herself in the belief that God does not give you more than you can handle. And through even the toughest of times, Heather strengthened her faith when others might have questioned theirs.

A friend once told me a spirit that shines brightly is the one not meant to be with us long. This was a hard concept for us to understand. But when we look back, Heather’s spirit was blinding. In her 26 years, she experienced:

a lifetime’s worth of laughter and joy,
a lifetime’s worth of faith,
and a lifetime’s worth of love – after all, she met her soul mate in Jason.

So we can miss Heather and be sad for our loss, but Heather would never allow us to feel sorry for her. Feeling sorry for Heather is the antithesis of the way she lived her life, and if you knew anything about Heather, you would not dare do anything to make her mad. She was difficult when angered here on Earth, can you imagine angering her now?

I guess the last thing I wish to leave you with is the sense of Heather. She will be with us each and every day. She will be all around us. Along with organizing the grandest of bingo games, Heather will be our greatest advocate. Heather will look down to make sure that Jason is protected and has a beautiful life, that her two families find strength they didn’t know they had, and that her girlfriends carry on in her name. She will look down and empower us when we are lonely and be there with us at night when we awake. And anywhere there is beauty, there you will find Heather. She was defined by butterflies, angels, dragonflies and the symbol she grew to love, the breast cancer ribbon. So each time you see one of these:

think of our Heavenly angel,
take comfort in the way she lived her life and in the peace she found through her faith,
and smile knowing Heather is up there taking charge of those looking down on you.