Dear Suzanne,

In the spring of our junior year at Ohio University, I called you from the student health center, asking you to join me there. You ran to my side and sat with me in an office while a nurse or doctor or whoever it was, diagnosed me as type one diabetic and told me I needed to get to the hospital to be admitted for treatment immediately. We were 21 years old. Twenty one years old and you had the intelligence and maturity to say to this person "Is there anything you can tell her that will make this a little less scary?" Your reaction was not to panic, but to find a way to make this moment more manageable emotionally. That was, and is, your way. While there were intense moments in our life together at OU, (like the mystery of which housemate was stealing our food), we had far more fun and laughter there and since. Good ones and scary ones, all of those memories are great ones.

Love, Cyd