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She was a strong person, they said. A beautiful person, a brilliant person.

Yet Annie Nelson, who would have been 20 next month, could also be serious, stubborn, empathetic and silly.

Remembering this, friends who attended her memorial service last Wednesday at Mount Si High School honored her memory by lightening the mood at the event whenever it turned somber.

"Annie really wanted for this to be more of a celebration, and not a sad thing," said friend and neighbor Sharon Hockenbury, whose daughter Taryn, organized the memorial with the help of another close friend and classmate with Annie, Samantha.

Dianna "Annie" Jene Nelson died July 29, almost two years exactly after she was diagnosed with non-rhabdomyosarcoma, a soft-tissue cancer that started as a painful lump on her back.

When she was diagnosed, Annie had been looking ahead to her last year of high school. She missed most of her senior year though, because she immediately started an aggressive course of treatment for the cancer.

"They really hit her hard at Children's (Hospital) as far as the first six months," recalled her mother, Joanne. Annie had surgery to remove the lump, followed by both radiation therapy and chemotherapy. By February, she was in remission, able to return to school, her friends, and her boyfriend, Spencer Newsad.