Thursday, September 13, 2007

An Event to Remember

The amazing, wonderful benefit for Dawn was such an enormous success! Thanks to so much hard work, donations, and hundreds of attendees, we exceeded our wildest expectations! The benefit brought in $8471! This is an enormous showing of love and generosity from Dawn-lovers, art-lovers, and their friends.

A very special thank you to Pam Nichols who had this idea and made it happen in very short order. Pam, this event might never have happened if left to me. I sincerely appreciate your willingness to take it on! And your attention to every detail. It was wonderful!

I send another very special thank you to Tracy Dana and Jerry Fechter, Dawn's next door neighbors and friends. Thank you for your very generous assistance and tireless work to arrange the location, food and drink. Please give my thanks to the Lucky Lab also!!

I am also overwhelmed by the amount of BEAUTIFUL art that was donated for auction and sale. These pieces were stunning, and gave the auction such depth! Thank you artists!

Thanks also to the legions of volunteers that showed up to help set up and clean up, took money, and made the whole thing flow as smoothly as it did.

And of course, thank you, thank you, thank you to the hundreds of people who arrived on a Friday evening with their checkbooks in hand and bought things. Thank you for inviting your friends, family, and coworkers. Thank you.

I had the pleasure of telling Dawn about the success of the benefit the next morning. She was speechless. Her mother was covered in goosebumps. It's a beautiful thing to help someone. I hope you all can carry that glow with you for awhile.

Besides the fact that the benefit was a HUGE success. I thought it was also a lot of fun. It was wonderful to meet many of the people I've been communicating by email with lately. I also enjoyed sharing "Dawn Stories" with many of you. It made me happy (and Dawn too) that it was not a tearful event, but a joyous one. Dawn is an amazing person, and now I see so clearly how amazing people attract amazing people - and LOTS OF THEM! I hope to post photos here soon. Please send them to me if you have any!!

I know many of you have been waiting to get an update on Dawn's health. I am overdue to provide one. It keeps getting harder to write this part. But here goes... Dawn has been experiencing a lot of muscular pain. It's possible that it's from being in bed so much, but it may also be the cancer - we don't know. As a result, she has been trying to control the pain with massage, acupuncture, and pain medication. She still wasn't comfortable, however, so her doctors have prescribed morphine. This has actually been a great thing for two reasons. First, her pain is definitely more under control now, and secondly she is less groggy than she was when she was using all the other pain meds.

Dawn continues to get weaker though, and her body is not cooperating as well as it used to. Occasionally she finds a small burst of energy - the other day I set up some of her paints and brushes for her - hoping she'd paint a bit. She bossed me around for awhile, "I need better light. I need more brushes. I need burnt sienna and jenkins green." By the time we had everything in place, she needed a nap. I think she was loving it, though. I'm hoping she'll try again today.

Many of you have asked about visiting her. She has asked her family to stop visitors now. It is very exhausting and emotional for her to see all the visitors that want to come by. She is being read her emails and the messages from the blog by her sister. She is also being read cards and letters that arrive in the mail. She loves all of those things very much!

I would like to refill the schedule with some home cooked meals. Dawn's mother has told me several times that is really makes a difference for her not to have to worry about what she is going to feed herself, her husband, and Dawn's sister, Mary Beth. Please email me if you would like to get on the upcoming schedule for delivering a meal to them.

Sincerest thanks to you all for all you have done and continue to do,
Kristin
kkellyknits@gmail.com

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What Kristen said about amazing people attracting amazing people has occurred to me also through this experience. To have met and heard from some of the network of friends, Dawn, that you have "accumulated" over the years is very impressive. You have such a fun loving, easy going, accepting and forgiving personality, I am honored that I had the priviledge to meet you (in 8th(?) grade)and be friends with you but to also reconnect with you at this time.

What a great success the benefit was! Wow! Congratulations to those involved!

I wish you comfort and peace as you travel this path. You are in the thoughts of many, many people.
Love, Tracey