LONGMONT, Colo. — The funeral services for a fallen soldier from Colorado took place Saturday afternoon. Army Specialist Gabriel Conde was killed in action in Afghanistan on April 30.

His body returned home to northern Colorado on Friday. Hundreds honored him during the procession from Loveland to Longmont.

At Saturday’s service, friends and family described Conde as a confident, stoic man. They said he was quite the poet as well. Fittingly, Conde’s sister Priscilla Conde wrote him a poem she titled, “Remember Him.”

“Remember him, please, if it’s not too much to ask,” Priscilla Conde read.

At Conde’s service, people talked about how he lived, not how he died.

“Gabe was deep rooted in his faith,” his friend Kiah Leonard said.

“It’s really hard to describe such a great guy,” another friend, Heath Pirkey, said.

One by one, people walked up and poured their hearts out in remembrance of the fallen hero.

“He was the finest son,” Conde’s mom Donna Conde said. “When I last hugged him goodbye almost a year ago at the airport, I cried, ‘Come home alive, Gabe.’ He said, ‘I will, Mom.’ This is the only time he did not comply with a command from his momma.”

There were tears and words that people struggled to say, but also laughs.

“The true hero never makes it home so his brothers can,” an Army friend said.

Conde will be laid to rest on Monday at Fort Logan National Cemetery in Denver.