The Story Behind My First Book Dedication

The dedication page of my first novel Deception reads:

 

For Delia,

Though we never had the chance to meet in person

Your friendship was a true treasure, 

I will never forget you and I wish you weren’t taken so young.

 

About ten years ago I joined a message board to talk with other people who were in similar life situations that I was in. I was struggling at the time with my roles in life and it really helped to talk with others in the same boat.

It helped to talk about life with others and some of them had more similar experiences to me than others. I would often find myself writing private messages to some of them and we would have even more candid discussions than the ones on the general board.

A special connection

I want to share with you about a special person who became a very dear friend of mine. Delia and I seemed to connect almost immediately; it soon became clear that our lives held many parallels. It was pretty amazing to see all of the similarities that our lives held.

We had many things to talk about and seemed to understand each other in ways that others didn’t. We definitely held many of the same core life values and beliefs. Our personalities were quite similar, and we even joked that our husbands were separated at birth.

We had a special connection and I remember that a few times I had asked her to pray for me and each time that she did pray for me I saw quick results. So when I wanted to have a baby I made sure to have her pray for me! She’d had her first baby already and then I had mine not too long after that. About a year later she had her second.

Health Challenges

Around that time, I discovered that I had thyroid cancer. Unfortunately that’s not where our parallel lives part. Around the time that I found out that I was expecting my second baby, she had discovered that she had a tumor in her brain.

Sadly, this is also about the time that we started to lose contact. We were in touch once in a while on Facebook and the last I had heard and understood from her, things were looking good and she was in remission. I wasn’t feeling well with the pregnancy and I just assumed that things were continuing to go well for her recovery as they had for me.

Then a while later I found out on Facebook that my friend had taken a turn for the worse and was in hospice care, no longer taking any treatments.

Heartache

I can’t even explain the shock that I felt. It didn’t matter that I had never met her in person, that I had never given her a hug. We had connected, we had shared our lives, we had shared pictures of our kids. I still went through all of the stages of grief and then again when I learned that she had passed away.

It’s a very sad day when a loving wife, mother of two young children, stepmom, friend, aunt, cousin, and daughter dies at the age of 33.

I never got the chance to meet Delia in person but she was most definitely my friend and I continue miss her very much.