Kindness of strangers

Most goodbyes at life's end involve someone you know, whether a family member, friend, or colleague. But they can also involve strangers, and they can be surprisingly poignant.

That was the case with Heather, a young teenager I met while working as a newspaper reporter in Florida in the 1980s. Heather had developed bone cancer that spread, and the treatments left her confined to a hospital bed in her family's trailer home in a rural community outside Tampa.

As I recall, Heather desperately wanted to visit New York City but was too ill to go. Having grown up in Manhattan, I really wanted her to see the "city that never sleeps." So I enlisted the help of my high school friend Andrew, a commercial video and film producer, to shoot some footage of our hometown. Andrew and his wife, Lisa, went above and beyond the request, traveling around the city and filming street scenes at Christmastime, like store windows decorated for the season and a "human tree"of carolers at South Street Seaport. They even personalized the piece for Heather; for example, they went to Rockefeller Center and had ice skaters glide past the camera shouting, "Merry Christmas, Heather!" It was one of the most touching things I have ever seen.

"We'd go up to strangers and tell them quickly about the project, and everyone was so touched and open and friendly, essentially wanting to help in any way they could," Andrew remembers.

With the finished video in hand, I delivered it with a colleague who had photographed Heather for the Tampa newspaper. The details are fuzzy, but I know Heather and her family were thrilled. She died peacefully in January 1987 at the age of 13.

And 21 years later, I remember the kindness of two people -- and everyone they approached -- who helped a little girl they had never met living more than 1,000 miles away. What a beautiful goodbye gift.