Cindy McGowan Cairns Obituary - Visitation & Funeral Information

I will always miss you. I remember your attention in Florida in our house with the floor to ceiling mirrors, you painted Santas and Christmas trees on them, at my level, near the ground. Later you learned to paint faces, and brought that turquoise box of paints anywhere it might makes sense. I remember I was interested in tigers then, and maybe I asked you to paint me like one. I remember birthday parties when you worked so hard, and musical chairs with towels on the lawn, and a cassette of songs about animals, and a dance about flamingos you led us all in. I wish I would have told you when you were alive that I remember how scared I was on the first day of kindergarten and how you reassured me that it would be okay, that I could call you if I wanted. You taught me to read at home with color by numbers. You took me to see Beauty and the Beast, Men in Black—Beethoven I remember specifically because you assured me, it’s okay Danny, not every movie you’re ever going to like will be a cartoon. I remember a legend of Zelda easter egg set, and I asked you to hide the cardboard treasure chest for me to find. You put a dollar in it and hid it in the cabinet to the right of the sink. Thank you. I remember the Macintosh Performa 575, which must have been 1994, so I must have been 8, when we stayed up all night reading a cd-rom encycolopedia of animal facts. Together we read the manual, and learned the word icon. I remember when our neighbor Dave died of cancer and you gently broke the news to me. I remember when news was broke to you of your father’s cancer, upstairs, in Fayetteville, when you were reading some Oprah’s book Club. Gap Creek? And you flew alone to Minnesota, and I stood by dad at the gate and watched the plane carry you away from me for the first time. I missed you so much, and I couldn’t stop crying. An employee asked: what was wrong, and dad, you told her that mom and I were just very close. I remember you asked for my help as a teenager screwing something into the ceiling. I had to spin in place in a chair, and you sang spinning wheel, because I asked you to. I remember you played the theme from MASH on the flute in the laundry room in Florida. I remember driving back, fast, to the mall because you couldn’t leave sick Miki Moto behind. You held his face in your hand to test his temperament. You were always there for me, every last school field trip, baseball game, band performance, you were there. We collected baseball cards, and we went to every card show, every weekend in Miramar. You made me an elaborate Florida Marlin birthday party for their inaugural season in 93, with a big baseball piñata. There were always pinatas. I remember sitting with you every morning in Florida for a while, puffing on a nebulizer that tasted like marshmallows. I made you an ash tray in art class, and I think that’s when you quit smoking. I went down the street one day and you found me, and my friends had found a Fairway Elementary graduation owl full of candy, but you didn’t seem to care, since I had run away and you were angry. I planned to run away, in an early memory, and I stuffed a giant Miami Dolphins bag, shaped like a shoe, full of socks, and make a show of stomping around the living room on my way out. We laughed about it immediately. You helped the poor. You always did. I don’t know the specifics, but you were there for families in Clayton County, and gave them things. To quote a song that has helped me imagine the goodbye I never took the chance to share with you: “You were a presence full of light upon the earth, and I am a witness to your life and to its worth.” I wish I’d been there for you in the end. I hope you knew how much I loved you, how much I wanted you to get better, and how I knew you were always there, just behind the clouds. I remember the last period of time when you and I were there for each other, in 2014 perhaps, when you started careful cuttings—which, Ara’s name for it was much better, and you should have called Tender Loving Lawncare—and we worked on your resume. It kills me to look at those emails now and think of the time we lost. There are so many things in this life you only get for a moment—thanks for these moments, and for the warm precious memory of your being. It is so easy to remember now, too little too late, what a beautiful person you were, caring and hard-working and misunderstood. I hope I occasionally helped you feel loved on this earth. I wish I could do it now. Thank you for believing in me. I have you to thank for all that I am. Your legacy lives on in me, and it is your spirit that animates me. There is so much I wish I could say now to your gracious smiling face, and I hope you can hear me. If it’s too late to save your life, know that your life on this earth can’t end so long as I live, since you are all of me. So much of the good in me, I owe to your enduring, generous, fierce and yielding spirit, that was always there for me, and whose love I never questioned. You will always be with me. Thank you for giving me every last drop you had to give. I love you.

Cindy McGowan Cairns

December 2, 1963 - January 24, 2018

Obituary & Service

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Cindy McGowan Cairns

December 2, 1963 - January 24, 2018

Obituary & Service

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