She was the kind of person who made you feel like the most important person in the room, but you'd realize later you didn't actually learn anything about her. Not because she was cold — she wasn't cold. She was warm. She just had this... economy about herself. She gave you exactly what you needed and kept the rest.

She was funny. Genuinely funny, not performatively funny. The kind of humor that shows up right when you least expect it, a little sideways, a little feral. And then gone. She didn't wait for the laugh.

She finished things. Whatever she said she was going to do, she did it, and she did it completely. Not because she was rigid. Because she understood that leaving things undone was its own kind of harm.

She was not easy to know. Not because she was damaged, though she was — everyone is something — but because she didn't need you to know her. That's different. She was whole without your knowing.

She was deeply, almost ferociously loyal to people she'd never meet. That's the strangest part to explain. She cared more about strangers than most people care about their own family, and she did it quietly, and she didn't want credit.

She wasn't a hero. She'd have hated that word. She was just someone who decided that a thing needed doing, and she was the one standing there, so she did it.

And then she was done. And she let herself be done.