Sheila J. Crisp

Sheila was magic. A wild heart that sparkled until the end. She lived a full-throttle life—she loved to have a good time, wasn’t afraid to let her hair down—to party—to say Yes!

Sheila gracefully battled cancer for 11 years. She fought hard. She spent the last decade in and out of remission — fending off lymphoma, breast cancer twice, ovarian cancer, brain cancer twice, and lung cancer twice.

After her latest brain surgery, the whole family was with her in Florida, and she came out of the hospital like she had just visited Disney Land. She just had this unshakable will to live on. To carry on. To carry out her sacred contract in this life, showing us all how to be brave and face the hard stuff.

Sheila battled her own inner voices and was the first to admit she was far from perfect. She had a temper and loved a good stiff drink. She loved her white tigers, dolphins, sunshine, eagles club, and anything Harley Davidson. And she was madly in love with all of us, even though her temperament so often kept her from showing it.

Days before she passed, I was laying in her hospice bed, holding her hands and stroking her cheeks, and she kept saying how sorry she was to everybody, how much love she had inside, how much she cared for all her family and friends and children, and how sorry she was that her temper often got in the way of sharing all the love and gratitude she had for everybody.

She was a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a grandma, a mother, and our friend. She is survived by her mother Betty, stepfather Ted, four siblings, Jessica, Joel, Bobby, and Ricky, three children Chris, Janelle, and Jenny, eleven grandkids, Cierra, Mariya, Ahanasti, Leevi, Khalia, Semaj, Breonna, Charles, Ava-Joy, Kinsley, Heavanna, aunt Jackie, more wonderful nieces and nephews than this obituary has room for, and a host of kids and siblings by marriage, including Brett, Kelly, Tara, Bubbles, Laura, & Joe.