On September 7th, 2013, Sharon Dahlen, our amazing, tender mother passed away gracefully in her home in Victoria, BC.
Sharon was born in Creston, BC on July 25, 1947 to Harold and Rita MacLaren and moved to Dawson Creek in the late 1960s with the rest of her family when her father accepted a teaching position with School District 59.
After graduating from South Peace Senior Secondary in 1967, Sharon worked briefly for the Peace River Block News.  She moved with her then husband, Laine Dahlen, to Nelson, BC in 1969 and a few years later their children, Sienna and Mathieu Dahlen, were born.  While in Nelson, Sharon worked for the Nelson Daily News and by 1975 she was the first woman at the newspaper to have completed her Journeyman Certificate in Composing Room Production, witnessing the change from hot type to computer-based type setting.
In the fall of 1975 Sharon and her family moved back to Dawson Creek where she became a full-time stay at home mom.  In her later years Sharon worked for the Homemakers Association caring for the elderly and ran her own business selling home-baked goods in her neighborhood and hand-sewn uniforms for nurses and the like.
Sharon struggled for many years with epilepsy and diabetes and yet she cared for her own mother on a daily basis until she passed away.  Sharon never once complained of her situation and chose to live simply, but happily.
Sharon was and continues to be the most caring, giving being that we’ve ever known.  Her spirit soars through us, her family and everyone else that knew and loved her.  We will always be in awe of her strength and endless outpourings of love.
Please join us in sending prayers and love her way as she moves on through the next dimension of her journey.  In the words of Emily Dickinson, she has been “called back”.  Her generosity is needed in the world today and we are certain that she will be out there healing and caring for people, animals, the forest… anyone and anything that needs a helping hand… to the best of her ability, selflessly, as she always has.
Love, light and peace, Mom.
We will always love you.
Sincerely, Matt, Sienna and the rest of our family
On Death
Kahlil Gibran
You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot
unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.