Dawn - Our Star in Heaven

Last December, 2021, my husband and I decided to leave the home we had built 41 years earlier when Dawn was only 2, and move to North Carolina. It was a state I would never have expected to call home. But we moved there because Dawn, our darling daughter, asked us to. We didn’t know at the time that she was sick. As I look back on photos we took a year ago, I now see in them something other than fatigue. She didn’t know at the time that she was sick either.

Dawn didn’t live in denial as much as she lived in hope, faith and optimism. She loved life and in that life, she loved her son most of all. It was our privilege to take care of her the last eight months of her life when she lived with us. In fact, I still think of our master bedroom suite, with its ensuite and huge walk in closet, as “Dawn’s room.” We haven’t had the heart to move back into it yet.

Dawn didn’t have the time to meet all of her goals. But she didn’t know that. Dawn had planned to keep blogging, home-schooling her son, build herself a tiny home, find time to continue taking dance classes, and continue creating her wonderful skin elixir. Doctors and hospitals were not on her agenda, but unfortunately became a part of her reality.

As I ventured around the city of Raleigh with her to appointments or to shop, I watched her do something peculiar. No matter where she was, she would find the time and energy to pray for people around her. It was as if doing so was to be her last big assignment.

I know you will miss her. As I look back on her life and her work, I realize she accomplished what she came here to do - to be a source of light; to bring more peace; to be a source of wisdom; and to bring joy and healing to the world. She did all of that and so much more.

There are things you will miss, and there is much that I will miss. She was my daughter and I, her mother. But who will now go to dance concerts with me? Help me with my hair? Who will be there to encourage me to organize my kitchen? Monitor what I am eating? Encourage me to be more patient? And tell me she loves me as only she can?

So farewell my “angeling.” I know you’re free again. That you’re at peace with Jesus. That you can dance again. And that you’re watching over those of us you love. There will never be another you. Thank you for being all that you were to all of us.

I love you, always.

Ma