Shortly before Shriya Shah-Klorfine left Canada to chase her childhood dream of climbing Mount Everest, she pressed a small gift into the hand of a close friend -- a heart-shaped gold locket, personalized with miniature portraits of the two women.
"She said, ‘You're always in my heart. Keep me close to you,'" recalled Shellyann Siddoo.
Though they didn't know it then, it was the last time the two would see one another.
Shah-Klorfine, a 33-year-old Toronto resident, was among four climbers who died while descending from Mount Everest's summit over the weekend. Reports indicate the Nepalese-Canadian woman may have collapsed from exhaustion during the descent.
Unaware of what had happened to her "big sister," Siddoo made a phone call on Saturday to the person who organized Shah-Klorfine's climbing expedition. She was expecting to congratulate her friend on conquering the 8,848-metre mountain.
Instead, Siddoo was met with near-silence.
"He gave the phone to another person. He could not talk, he was so distraught," she told CTVNews.ca in an interview from Mississauga, Ont.
Specific details about what transpired after Shah-Klorfine reached the summit of Mount Everest remain unclear. Speculation has abounded about windstorms, low oxygen and a "traffic jam" of 150 climbers trying to reach the top.
In the days after Shah-Klorfine's death, her husband Bruce was certain of one thing.
"She died in the pursuit of her dreams, and with the satisfaction of having achieved them," he had said in a statement issued to CTV Toronto.
That's also the way Siddoo prefers to remember Shah-Klorfine, a go-getter who didn't wish -- but knew -- she would one day climb the highest mountain on earth.
"She's just such a compassionate and loving person," said Siddoo, a 28-year-old motivational speaker. "There's just this amazing, amazing energy around her."
The two met in February 2011 at a motivational lecture that Siddoo was delivering in Mississauga, Ont. At the event, called "Soaring Above all Odds," Siddoo told the audience about being burned in a workplace accident and later losing her vision.
"(Shah-Klorfine) came right up to me after the event and said that I inspired her. That's when she told me about her dream to climb Mount Everest," she said.
According to Siddoo, Shah-Klorfine recalled how she visited the mountain at age nine with her parents. Just a child then, she watched as a helicopter flew close to the mountain, and wondered why the passengers didn't just conquer it from the bottom up.
Inspiration struck Shah-Klorfine in that moment, said Siddoo.
"It became about more than just Mount Everest. Shriya wanted to do it because she understood we all face challenges in life."
