On Friday, hundreds of people gathered in New York City’s Temple Emanu-El for the funeral of Edie Windsor, who died on Tuesday at age 88. Windsor sued the United States government when it refused to recognize her marriage to Thea Spyer, ultimately toppling the federal ban on same-sex marriage at the Supreme Court. Windsor was represented by Roberta Kaplan, a civil rights attorney who continues to challenge (and defeat) anti-LGBTQ laws in America. Kaplan’s eulogy for Windsor is printed below. You can also watch it here, beginning at 1:48:00.

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One of the first things that Edie Windsor ever told me was that she only had a few more years left to live. That was more than eight years ago, in 2009. And she wasn’t kidding. After her spouse Thea Spyer passed away, Edie had suffered from a series of heart attacks, which were diagnosed as “broken heart syndrome.” Indeed, Edie asked me and other lawyers on our team to carry her nitroglycerine tablets for her when we attended events—just in case.

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And then I sent another letter. And another. And then one more. Believe it or not, over the next year and a half, I would write a dozen of these letters, each time begging Judge Jones to speed up the process. My co-counsel and noted constitutional scholar Pam Karlan aptly characterized them as my “Edie has the sniffles” letters. Although I knew there was a risk that we might be annoying the judge, I kept sending them anyway. As our son says when we catch him eating chocolate first thing in the morning: “I couldn’t help myself.”