Remembering Ashley

It is with a broken heart that I dedicate this page to the precious memory of Ashley Kanes. She should not be gone. She should be here, with all of us, living out her many dreams, experiencing the adventures she had yet to have, and embracing the love and support that surrounded her, through the hardest of times.

Ashley's eating disorder (which relentlessly swung from severe bulimia to severe anorexia and back again) was, I am confident she would say, NOT WORTH IT. It was not worth dying for. It was not worth a single moment she dedicated to it. It was not worth all the time, effort, hiding, and draining away of her beautiful energies.

Ashley would tell you all of this herself, if her eating disorder had not silenced her forever. I know this is true because Ashley felt this way towards her younger sister's eating disorder, as she watched and worried while her sister struggled. If she could have, Ashley would have saved her sister from the years of pain she endured, Ashley would have cured her sister if she could have, in a heart beat.

While her little sister fought and agonized and walked the narrow line between life and death in her eating disorder, Ashley was able to deny her own fight, agony and slowly but steadily building health problems. Ashley managed to avoid facing her own eating disorder for a while, as her younger sister was pushed to face hers. But this method of avoiding the hard reality of her own illness did not last. Ashley was confronted, she was interviened upon, she was dragged to appointments with professionals, she was even confronted by her young sister who knew all too well what was happening.

But Ashley, like so many of you reading this right now, refused treatment. She used her strength and intelligence to fight off the love, help and support that she actually needed desperately. She convienced herself that she could manage and control a killer eating disorder and still have a good life... and still have a life at all... and still be alive.

But Ashley was human, like you are. Her body fought to stay alive despite her self-destructive actions. But her body, like yours, was fragile. It did everything it could to stay alive. It fought the damage she caused it for years. But her body, like yours, was precious and needed to be treated as such. It hung on for as long as it could. But the eating disorder won, and after years of tormenting her mind and erroding her self-esteem, it finally destroyed Ashley's loving heart and she died.

Ashley ~ you are deeply missed and fondly remembered ~

A prayer from Ashley's memorial service is below: