My thoughts are with the family of Helen Cleland who died on Christmas Eve. I first met her (with my husband, Doug Van Hamme) at her brother's cottage on Crane Lake. My impression of her then has never changed. She was a beautiful, thoughtful woman who took an interest in and cared about others. The gentleness evident in her must have been a great asset while she worked as a nurse as well as in her relationships with family and friends. Several memories remain strong: her positive reaction to a book she and I were both reading, and the humorous nickname she had had for her younger brother when both of them were still children, revealed by her on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. Once met, Helen was hard to forget.