Celebrating Emily Edwards

Emily Laura King Edwards was foremost a beloved mother, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, and friend. She valued and exalted family & friends, nature, art, and community. Emily cared intensely for all people and animals, and especially the vulnerable. Emily fought for these values throughout her 35 years and over 7 years of fighting melanoma: cancer and its pain did not define Emily, but rather revealed her strength, beauty, grace, spirit, and love. Emily left us all too early, but we know that Emily's spirit lives in us and around us; if we look for her, we will find her. She will live on as long as we collectively continue her fight. Emily gave us the strength and prepared us to continue her good deeds.

This site is dedicated to her life, love, and legacy. Please scroll down to see Emily's values.

Updated: 13 October 2019.

Celebrations

Two celebrations of her life were held in her two home states and associated information is contained on this site (click on the state to be taken to the applicable site): Emily was raised in Colorado and raised her own family in Massachusetts.

Fundraiser

If able, please help us celebrate Emily's life by contributing to her GoFundMe celebration fundraiser: https://www.gofundme.com/f/celebrating-emily-edwards. This fund will be used to celebrate Emily's life and to support her causes (more detail is on the GoFundMe page). Please contribute to this fundraiser in lieu of flowers or food. This fundraiser site will be updated as projects and donations are made in her honor.

Memories

To ensure that her daughter Jane knows her mommy's life and her family knows how she was loved, we ask that anyone that knew Emily, or Emily and Jane together, send memories to this email: celebratingemily@kngedwrds.com (if you feel that we missed something on this site, please send an email to this address as well). Please include a short memory description, including location, Emily's age, how she impacted you, and any pictures or video. Please also include anything else that you poignantly remember about Emily, such as favorite things: for example, animals, movies, shows, food, music, and clothes. If you have videos of Emily's performances throughout her life, her family would greatly appreciate having those. If your young children also knew Emily, please also share their memories. If desired, please also post in the Celebrating Emily Edwards Facebook group so that we can celebrate together. If you have additional ideas for how to celebrate her life, please share.

Additionally, please post and send new memories that you make in honor of Emily. Sadness is expected, but Emily would want us to grow strength from sadness, and use that strength to help and support others.

Family and Friends

Emily cherished all her family, and especially her miracle daughter Jane; she always wanted a little red-head girl named Jane. Not only does Jane reflect Emily's beauty, but Emily grew Jane into a smart and caring girl that like Emily, will have an immense impact on the world. Emily loved spending time with all her family, and showered her nieces and nephews with love and gifts. Her definition of family was not only relatives, but also friends.

Nature

Emily loved spending time in the natural world, whether on a hike, bird watching with her daddy, exploring the ocean from the beach and by boat, the zoo, or on the pond. She loved seeing and interacting with all animals, but especially birds (cardinals and puffins) and baby mammals (kittens, cows), except for insects and spiders of course. She loved trees and flowers, including lupines, iris, lilies, mums, and roses.

Art & Travel

Emily was passionate in watching and taking part in the performance arts, and enjoyed the visual arts. Throughout her younger years she played piano and was involved in children's musical theater and dance (at the Younger Generation Players), and in show choir in high school. She visited art museums around the world, and particularly liked impressionism. As an adult, she helped organize adult tap dance classes, and was a dance mom at the infinitely supportive Spotlight Dance Academy. She loved to travel locally, nationally, and internationally: in addition to her two homes, her favorite places include Bavaria, Paris, Napa Valley, Maine, the Massachusetts North Shore, Disney World, and New York City.

Community

Emily immediately and fully involved herself in her community. As a child, Emily was a Girl Scout, and in high school she was a peer counselor, a cheerleader, a founder of the Gay Straight Alliance, and newspaper editor. In college, Emily supported her community by being a Resident Advisor and president of the Residence Hall Association (the student government of the residence halls) as well as a residence hall association regional board member (IACURH); as always, she celebrated and recognized other students by being president of National Residence Hall Honorary. She also promoted student pride and spirit by spearheading a student t-shirt campaign (Shoulder to Shoulder t-shirts), transforming the Colorado student section into gold, and founded the Stampede Camp to orient students to be leaders on campus and how to get involved. For more information on Emily's contributions in college click here. Once she moved to Westford, Massachusetts after college, she immediately became involved in town related committees: most notably East Boston Camps and the Conservation Trust. Her love of children was exemplified by founding the Westford Young Child Network. She would always vote in local, state, and national elections, and regularly attended town meeting. Emily would never miss town events with her family, including the Apple Blossom Parade, Strawberry Festival, and the Farmers Market. We will now rely on our Westford community to love and support Jane in the way that Emily would want.

Other Favorite Things

Colors: orange and brown (because she felt bad that others did not like them).

Shopping! (Retail Therapy): Lu La Roe, Abercrombie (in high school), Stuffed Animals, Boden, Hanna Anderson, Gap, silly hats.

Music: Emily would listen to almost any type of music from classical, to musicals, to R&B. In high school she liked NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, Blink 182, and dancing to country music. From there, she liked to listen to pop, oldies, acapella, and would even amuse her husband with jazz. Her favorite artists included Ed Sheeran, Tyrone Wells, ABBA, Journey, and Disney.

Sports: watching Colorado sports teams, Olympics (not curling). Although she did not like all sports, she enjoyed spending the time watching sports with her family and friends.

Movies: Star Wars, Disney (especially Brave), Harry Potter, Greatest Showman, Wizard of Oz, Lilo and Stitch.

Live Theater: especially musical theater, such as Les Miserables, Hello Dolly, Rent.

Playing Games: including but certainly not limited to Uno, Rat-a-Tat-Cat, Sleeping Queens, trivia, battleship.

Reading: mysteries, starting with Nancy Drew, and later books by Linda Fairstein, Sue Grafton, and Pat Conroy.

TV Shows: almost any mystery, such as NCIS, Elementary, Criminal Minds, and CSI, Food Network and HGTV, Glee, Once upon a Time.

Poems: Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Shel Silverstein.

Planning Events: Emily took great joy in celebrating others, and was a certified wedding planner at a hotel.

Food: tacos/nachos or "tachos" (her favorite), pizza, mac and cheese, gnocchi, lasagna, ice cream (Oreo in particular), broccoli, asparagus.

Emily's Songs and Wishes

This is a playlist of songs and poems that Emily desired for her celebration (the first 6 songs and the poems); the remaining songs were those that Emily enjoyed, including songs used for tap dancing. Link to Amazon Music playlist.

Emily's poems include (not all are in the playlist):

• The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

• Faith by Emily Dickinson

• Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

• Asleep by Emily Dickinson

• Listen to the Mustn'ts by Shel Silverstein

• How do We Let A Mother Go