I knew many boys and girls in high school... in 2 high schools, actually (Air Force brat).I knew a few who matured to adulthood before graduation.And some who would never grow up.I am pleased and proud to call many of these my friends. At the time, my best friends.But Lindy was the most comforting and peaceful soul I believe I ever met.She was a 60's hippie chick who's father was a Navy Commander and was transferred to Cheyenne Mountain... the center of our nation's aerospace and defense capabilities. It's a mountain designed to withstand a direct nuclear strike.Lindy, often -- beatiful long straight dark hair and round wide eyes -- had a natural defense.... she was at peace, always. She would lose hair at points in her life as radiation treatment for her Hodgkins disease ravaged her immune system with nearly as disastrous a result as the disease itself.But she always had a smile and a gentle laughing giggle. We became friends only a few months before she left Hawaii. But I quickly fell effortlessly in love with the sweetest, dearest soul I'd ever meet.And even when I joined the Army and then when I asked for Vietnam, Lindy remained my close good friend. Her parents welcomed me to their home where I stayed when I'd visit. And through combat as war unsettled my mind, Lindy would -- in a few words in a letter or a visit when I was on leave -- Lindy would settle me with her peace.My PTSD pulled me apart from everyone I knew or remembered before the war. And, too late, when I found help and wanted to call Lindy to tell her she'd likely helped me to retain what little spirit I had left after war, I found I had much less than I'd hoped. Her father, Joe, said that soon after 40, she turned to him one night and said, "Daddy, it's time." He would  take her to the hospital one last time.And Lindy would join the older souls. And somehow the world seemed just a whole lot less peaceful when I heard the news.That, Lindy would have said, was selfish. It's never a matter of having to let go of something you've never really had. From the moment I met Lindy Fiedeldey, she had that much less time to share with her. She always knew that. Not one of us who knew her ever did.Her full embrace of the joys of friendship and love taught us all so much more about how to live than how to die. And the loss I felt in not reaching her spurred me on to renew friendships of the past and rekindle them not as dying embers, but as warming coals... ashes to ashes, no... just another journey for Lindy Fiedeldey's soul.In absolute loving memory of the most selfless personI have ever known -- Lynn Marie FiedeldeyDennis Geehan