This Sunday, I say good-bye to a dear friend whose too-short life is being celebrated at a memorial service. She lived up the street from me and though our children attended different schools, we became instant friends in our exercise class. I loved her sense of humor, her quiet but unshakeable convictions, and her grit, which was evident in our workouts but grew to gargantuan levels in her short but intense fight with that evil of all evils, cancer.

When I launched my shop, my first order came from her. She placed it from her hospital bed. Not just because she loved the plates I was selling, but because she loved me. She believed in my idea. And for that, there are no words.