Hedda Sivertsson made many friends in her 15 years.
On Saturday, they will say goodbye at a memorial service in Parsippany.
“Our beautiful daughter passed away peacefully at home surrounded by her family on March 2nd, 2018. We love her and miss her endlessly,” Hedda’s mother, Camilla Sivertsson, said on Facebook this week.
The Morris Township teenager, who was a freshman at Morristown High School, was diagnosed with Medulloblastoma in September 2015, when she was 12. She endured surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy in her fight to live.
The community rallied behind her, with ribbons in her favorite color, turquoise, affixed to trees throughout Morristown. An online campaign, a Morristown High School theater production, and local joggers all raised money for research.
Last May, the Morristown High School Marching Band and hundreds of students and acquaintances appeared in a flash mob outside Hedda’s home, to cheer her as she faced another round of chemotherapy.
Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn even met with Hedda, an avid skier on the Mountain Creek race team, to offer encouragement. Olympian Ted Ligety send a video with best wishes just before last month’s Winter Olympics.
Hedda also played rugby, soccer and lacrosse. She devoted much of her brief life to comforting others, from fellow patients fighting illness to wounded animals that she nurtured to health, according to her obituary.
“Prior to the onset of her illness and at young age, she visited lonely elderly at a local nursing home to comfort them,” the obituary said. “Hedda was full of life and love and she brought smiles to the faces of the many whose lives she touched.”
“She’s the one you want to care for as her parent, but she cares for you,” Camilla Sivertsson told MorristownGreen.com last year.
“This little girl made us smile from the moment we met her,” Elizabeth Montanaro posted on the Ribbons for Hedda Facebook page. “Our hearts are broken hearing such sad news. She was a true inspiration and example of bravery, courage, grit and beauty.”
A family friend, Erica Johansson, described Hedda this way in a 2017 interview with Morristown Green:
“She is fuller than life. She is vivid, always on the go. I don’t think she ever sits still. This is an extraordinary girl,” Johansson said at the time.
Hedda is survived by her parents, Per and Camilla Sivertsson; her brother William, and her sister Elva; her godparents Joyce Hayes and Dan Brannen; her au pair Sarah Nicol, her maternal and paternal grandparents, great grandparents and four uncles in Sweden, and her two lovingly Yorkshire Terriers, Julia & Bella.
The March 10, 2018, memorial service runs from 12:30 pm to 4:30 pm at Liquid Church, 299 Webro Road, Parsippany. A welcoming is scheduled for the first 90 minutes; the hour-long service starts at 2 pm, followed by a 90-minute reception at 3 pm. Another memorial service will be held in Sweden next month.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations in Hedda Sivertsson’s memory be made to any of these causes:
Goryeb Children’s Hospital, The Valerie Fund, Morristown Medical Center
Please use link for donation and please tribute gift for Hedda Sivertsson to the Goryeb Children’s Hospital and Valerie fund. http://www.f4mmc.org/Ways-To-Give/Tribute-Gifts.aspx
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Please use link set up specifically for donations to tribute Hedda to support pediatric cancer research: http://mskcc.convio.net/goto/Hedda_Sivertsson
Donations can also be made by checks, made payable to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and should be mailed to: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Attn: Elliott Pollock, 885 Second Ave, 7th Fl., New York, NY 10017. Please indicate on the check that the gift is in memory of Hedda Sivertsson
Liquid Church High School Mission Trips
Please use link below and chose Morris County and choose “Hedda Memorial Fund HS Missions”: https://liquidchurch.com/give/
