I’m the youngest child out of five in my family. Somewhere along the line, I realized that there’s a good chance I’d be delivering four eulogies for my siblings. But I never imagined it’d be my big sister right now. I lost my dad when I was 20, and now I’ve lost my sister at 40. To truly know Heather, I’m going to take you back to the beginning of her life to tell you some of the reasons why Heather was the fantastic person she was.
Before having a family, my father was a college teacher at a few universities around the country, ultimately landing at McNeese and settling in Lake Charles. My father delivered all five of his children at home. My parents didn’t know what they were having until we were born. When Heather was born, my Mom was surprised it was a girl because she felt sure she had been carrying a boy all that time because of some of the common attributes like carrying the baby low as she had with my brother before her. But out popped Heather and a whirlwind began.
When my dad was hired by a training company in the Washington D.C. area, a 3yo Heather and 6mo me moved with our family to Maryland for the first 13 years of my life, a place Heather fell in love with for the rest of her life. That’s the flag on the table that she hung over her door. We grew up living in the same room together, getting in a lot of the same trouble together, up until the middle of high school when we separated for a few years. But as soon as I graduated high school, my parents were sold the entire duplex we were living in and Heather and I moved into the other side together the summer I turned 18.
She never felt feminine or girly all through her childhood and began wearing boys’ clothes by 1st grade. But history was made when Heather was in 2nd grade and my pre-teen brother got a crew cut. We called them flat tops when we were kids. Boooyyyy Heather wanted one soooo baaaad and she begged my parents to let her little 8-year old self get a flat top, to which they promptly told her NO. Heather was upset. One day, the siblings are all sitting on the couch in the living room after school watching TV when Heather gets home. The door flies open and Heather marches in and proudly proclaims to the whole house – “Don’t call me Heather anymore; call me Mike. Everyone busted out laughing as she marched herself proudly to our room and shut the door. What a character.
As children, we were dreamers. We had a lot of dreams. We wanted to be movie stars and rock stars. We used to dance and sing in the living room to our parents’ oldies CDs pretending we were in music videos or on stage. We used to make cassette recordings of ourselves reading print ads out of the magazines in funny voices and we would make up music and pretend they were commercials on our radio show. We used to eat our food on an ice chest in front of our back door and pretend it was the set for our cooking show called “Mixing and Tasting.” Great name, right?
Our dad had a Commodore 64 in our basement that saw many days and nights of Oregon Trail, Moon Patrol, and even some Olympics games on floppy discs. That huge joystick with the big red button – we were hooked! But when our older brother Nathan came home with a Sega Genesis one day, it was all over. Thus, the gamer was born in each of us. Sonic, Street Fighter, Battle Toads. Then he bought Moral Kombat and we would be glued to the screen. Throwing kicks, landing punches with such awesome sound effects and graphics of the 90s. We’d never seen blood flying out of someone on a video game! It was awesome! And it was an understood rule that if mom or dad open the door, you gotta instantly pause the game so they don’t see the fighting or all would be lost.
Heather liked sports and played a lot of basketball and volleyball in her adolescence. She also started learning to play the guitar after watching my brother teach himself. She did the same and really excelled. And if you know Heather, you know that girl can siiiiiiiiing. One thing Heather was known for by anyone who knows her and even people who didn’t know her was spontaneous song. She would dance and sing out loud for any occasion and it always made people laugh. She always seemed to know the perfect song at the right time and having spent a lot of time in the clubs in her 20s, she would bust out with some wild ones and have people just rolling! But we were raised in a Christian home and Heather began really embracing the Bible in high school and after graduating, she was hired as a worship leader for a year at a local church near the university.
This is around the time Heather was realizing that she was gay and she was really conflicted. She knew being a worship leader wasn’t who she was supposed to be. She was struggling with her identity and was tired of trying to be what she thought she was supposed to be. So, she quit as the worship leader and then she quietly came out to the people closest to her. She was ready to be who she wanted to be. She decided it was time to finally get that crew cut she’d always wanted. And since we were still living with Mom and Dad, she had to ask permission. So, she went to Mom and asked if she could cut her hair short. REAL short. Mom started getting upset. “Heather, your hair is so beautiful! Why would you chop it all off?” Dad hears the commotion and intervenes. “What’s going on up there?” “Heather wants to cut all her hair off!” There’s a pause. “Well, she’s an adult. It’s her hair. She can do whatever she wants with it.” And that was the end of that! Mom lost the battle and Heather won the war. I’m glad she was strong enough around 20 years old to finally decide to live out loud as Heather for the rest of her life.
Another thing about Heather is that she’s a city girl like me. She doesn’t like “the great outdoors.” No, she much prefers the great indoors. Moving to the south is a lot of outdoors and this was new to us. Her best friends here are Stacey and Jada. Jada is country and Stacey is swamp. Stacey and Jada were just friends back then and now they’re married. But back then in the 2000s when Stacey brought Heather along to chill with Jada one night out in the country, they were hanging in hammocks smoking, enjoying the quiet when Heather bolted upright and looked around. Something happened that she hadn’t quite heard before and she was concerned for their safety. The sound of the bullfrogs and locusts in the trees at dusk were so loud, Heather was confused. As they all sat there, she asked them. “Dude.. what is all that?” Jada takes a long, slow pull and says, “That’s NATURE.” Heather wasn’t ‘bout that life. Bugs and flying things aren’t her thing.
But flying? Now, that’s our thing. We used to dream of traveling the world when we were kids. We wanted to see every country but neither of us ever believed we might actually be able to travel abroad someday. I developed a passion for the French language and culture as a teenager and my dream was to go to Paris someday. I met the first man I wanted to marry when I was 28, Clint, and he wanted to bring me after we both graduated since I was getting a bachelor’s degree in French, but he passed away one semester shy of finishing. So, Heather and my sister Lesli brought me to Paris 2 months after he died for New Year’s Eve where we got to meet a sweet friend of mine for the first time that I met through Facebook, Anthea. I’m so glad that I got to be in Paris with my sisters all together. But it doesn’t stop there. In 2020, I met my current partner Alex who loves traveling more than we do! He took us with my mother to my mama’s favorite city – San Francisco. Then, we all went to Hawaii together. I was planning an unbelievable 8-day trip for us and hadn’t asked them yet what things they wanted to do there. Heather knew I had been to Hawaii before with Clint and went skydiving, so she asked me, “What day are we going skydiving?” I was caught off guard cuz I wasn’t planning on it. I said, “You want to go skydiving?” She said, “You don’t?!” So, we geared up and hopped in the plane tethered to our guides.
Naturally, it’s nerve-wracking. The first time I went, I was almost last out of the plane. I’m not sure I’d wanna go first cuz that’s scary! But wouldn’t you know Heather was the first one out of the plane! Her guide did a forward flip out of the plane with her and they were gone! And what a rush! Alex posted a photo of us falling saying, “Today, they jumped out of a perfectly working airplane.” When we landed, I asked her how she felt about being the first one out because I would’ve been scared to go first! She said, “Well, if you’re gonna die, you’re gonna die. It doesn’t matter if you go first or last.” I had to hand it to her, that was some forward thinking. She wasn’t that scared. I admired her for that. And she loved it so much, she would’ve jumped out of the plane again and again. One thing my mother asked for was to ride in a helicopter. So, we also got to do a helicopter tour of the island all together. We opted for the no-doors ride, so Heather was strapped into the helicopter on the outside seat with no door to fly all over the island for an hour. Amazing! I’m so glad that she was the one who got to sit with no doors. What a blessing that we all got to share such special memories with Heather in such incredible places.
On my last trip abroad with her in 2023, we left a week after her birthday and went to Europe for 3 weeks. Alex and I enjoy photography and wanted to see the lavender in Provence which only grows in the summer. After leaving Nice, we were in Marseille on the way out to Provence. I had offered Heather to come along on that leg to see the lavender, but I told her, “We have to rent a car and it’s a lot of driving.” And she asked, “And what is this for? To see some plants or something? Yeah, I’m good. I’ll stay in Marseille.” So, Heather stayed in Marseille by herself for 3 days. And she had a fantastic time! I was so proud of her for once again being so brave to hang around by herself in a foreign country where she doesn’t really speak the language and in a city all the way in the south where they don’t all speak English. We missed it, by the way, the lavender. It was a dry, hot summer and they had cut it a week early, just days before we got there. Talk about travel fail, when we were in Paris on that same trip, I finally had tickets to go up the Eiffel Tower because I’d never been on it before. As we were lining up with our 9:30pm reservation, a woman is walking down the line announcing that the elevator up was broken and we could only go to the 2nd level, which we did and got great photos. We were even able to connect a video chat with our mom who happened to be visiting her sister! We got to show them the beautiful, twinkling Tower above us. It was a nice moment that is even more special in my memory now.
Heather was one of the best friends you could have. She cared deeply for people and went out of her way for so many people for so much of her life. Heather has been deeply loved by a few people in her life. Her childhood friend Amy loved Heather so much, she flew her up to Maryland to be a part of her wedding. She couldn’t imagine such a momentous day in her life without her best friend there. Heather was so happy to be there! Her best friend here is Stacey. She’s not from Lake Charles and they’ve been best friends for nearly 20 years now. They went through some dark days together and pulled each other through. When Stacey ended up homeless after a bad relationship, she needed a place to stay that was safe and quiet where she could crash during the day because she worked at the hospital as a nurse at night. Heather said, “Why don’t you live with me?” She gave Stacey her bed to sleep in during the day so Stacey could work 12h shifts overnight to support her small child. Heather had such a giving heart.
Heather was there the day Stacey met her now wife Jada and Heather was there to help Jada pick out Stacey’s ring because Jada knew, no one knew better than Heather. After they got married, Stacey wanted to stay here in Lake Charles to be close to her best friend. They’ve been through a few hurricanes and a few homes, but always near to Heather. During one of the hurricanes of the 2000s, a bunch of friends stayed at Stacey’s apartment for a hurricane party. During the storm, Heather joked, “It’s like Sodom and Gomorrah out there!” They were like, “What’s that?” She told them that’s the story where God wiped everyone out. None of them knew that story. They looked at her kind of shocked and Stacey said, “That didn’t happen! There’s no way that’s really in the Bible.” So Heather told her to go get a Bible which she did, and in the middle of the storm, all of them got on the floor and gathered around Heather for story time, and she read them the story of Sodom and Gomorrah right out of the Bible. “See? I told you.” They all laughed and laughed, and laughed about it for years on. Stacey has always kept Heather close and remained close to her ever since.
When Heather died, I knew I had to tell Stacey right away. But I knew how much Stacey loves Heather and I knew I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. So, I called Jada to let her tell her. Stacey was devastated and just couldn’t believe it. It was a blessing that I called them though because she was able to rush over right away to see Heather one last time. When she was brought down in a velvet body bag, they let Stacey run her fingers through her hair one last time and she was glad to see her hair looked so good. Heather would’ve been happy about that. And with that, she kissed her best friend goodbye. Then, my sweet mother stepped forward and kissed her and told her she loved her so very much, and then she kissed her daughter goodbye one last time. The priest across the street from our house saw the police at my mother’s house and he came to pray with her. Then, he went to pray over my sister’s body. Heather was surrounded by love and light till the very end.
To be so moved by love for her, means Heather truly was special. Her reach was so far and wide that we’ve had multiple requests to live stream here. We’ve been joined from Ohio, Philadelphia, California, Maryland, and even a few friends in France. Heather was a precious gem, one of those unforgettable people who was full of life and laughter and song. She inspired people in her life to enjoy the little moments and make them fun. She drew people in with her carefree nature and put people at ease with her smile. But her laugh is what made you her friend. One thing my dad used to say that I’ve tried to live by: Aspire to inspire before you expire. I can surely say that my sweet sister Heather has done just that. May we all laugh a little louder and love a lot harder.
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