In Memoriam: Deborah Lind Jamieson Krohn 1950-2010

I had tried to contact Debbie before but was not successful.   The last time I saw her was before we moved to South Bend--25 years ago.

I was reminded of that trip a few days ago and decided to try to find my old friend again.  This time her name appeared--in an obituary from 2010.  She died at age 59 and I will never be able to have any contact with her again.  The finality of it has overwhelmed me in the last 24 hours.  I tried to track down her daughter Sara and sent an email to the CDC in Washington, DC where Linked-In says she works.  I wanted to express my sympathy to someone.

Debbie and I met at a women's group at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Cary, North Carolina shortly after we moved there.   During our first meeting the women introduced themselves with most of them saying what their favorite craft activity was.  I didn't do crafts and was so bold as to say so.  Later Debbie came up to me for just that reason and we became friends.

Not long after that there was a crisis in her marriage and her mental health.  She called me, I put the bread that was rising on the counter in the refrigerator, put four year old Jeff in the car, and went right over to see her.  It was a hard time but she was tough and resilient and ended up finishing her undergraduate degree at the University of NC in Greensboro.   She loved our Jeff and counseled me more than once when I was feeling needy. She took some treasured photos of our family which I still have and will include.

Over the next several years we saw each other in Greensboro and in Raleigh.  She remarried, moved to Wilmington, had a child and opened an interior design business.  We lost contact.

To think of her as no longer with us is painful.  To realize that she probably was single again and remarried one more time makes me wonder what else happened in her life. Her survivors were her mother, daughter, and brothers.  To see that the memorial contributions were to be made to the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation makes me realize that she probably suffered with a serious illness.

I hope her daughter will contact me.  I am even more determined to keep up with friends we have made over the years.  We have lived in many places and here in South Bend, many of our good friends have moved away as they retired.  We are aging and this is going to be our story more often over the years we have left.

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Sara Jamieson did email me with her thanks for my taking the tiime to contact her.  (February 24)