Update on Whitney
I am saddened to inform you all that our beloved wife, daughter, sister, and friend Whitney passed away Friday night at the age of 32. Despite her young age and the tragic circumstances of her illness, Whitney led a full and happy life.
As a kid, she worked hard in school and maintained a strong commitment to her friends, her academic excellence, dance, and the violin. In college she surrounded herself again with an amazing group of people and made full use of her newfound freedom to explore and experience the world as a young adult. When we met for the first time in our senior year, she was already so full of life and had a magnetism about her that made it impossible to stay away. We hit it off immediately and were deeply in love only a couple months later.
In the following years, Whitney and I built a life together first in LA and eventually in Seattle. As is her way, Whitney was quick to pick up new lifelong friends along the journey who have become our family today. By early 2017, we were happily engaged and Whitney was living her dream attending UW Medical School. By summer of that year, she had been diagnosed with Stage 4 Colon Cancer.
Very early on in her fight, Whitney decided that she would not allow her disease to control her. Over the past four years, she worked hard to create as much joy as possible in her life and in the lives of those around her. Together with her friends and family she traveled the world, tried new things, and continued to educate and improve herself every single day. She wanted to fit a lifetime's worth of experiences into the time she had left and at the same time share a lifetime's worth of herself with those around.
At our wedding Whitney made a promise to never stop fighting for all of us. I am forever grateful for her strength to keep that promise and for each extra moment we got with her. While she was not religious, Whitney believed she would live on with us through shared memories and experiences. As such a large part of all of our lives, I am glad to think this means she won't ever truly leave us.
Whitney - I will love you forever and always. I hope that you are at peace and that I get to see you again soon.
David
--------
We plan to have a memorial celebrating Whitney's life when it's a bit more safe to do so (tentatively early next year). I will share more details. If any of you have questions or want to talk about Whitney, please don't hesitate to contact me (206-779-6872). Please feel free to pass this message along to anyone else. If you would like to share photos, videos, or memories of Whitney, please add them to this folder. For folks that want to make a donation in Whitney's memory, feel free to donate to a charity of choice aligned with issues Whitney was passionate about like racial equality, reproductive rights, access to healthcare, and mental health resources.
