Christina Dean

10-30-1951 to 5-9-2011

To My Lady Christina, a letter:

In the spring I found you gazing at the stars. Those stars you shared with me gave me a purpose I had always hoped to find, but always feared to seek. In the summer you shared with me, the joy of many moments to build the love of a lifetime. In the fall, we married, becoming one soul in two bodies with the need for each other as a coin needs two sides. This need I still feel and always will.

Without you I am as incomplete as a ship with no water to sail and being so I may exist but cannot live without having you to look at every day. I need to see the smile in your eyes as the sky needs the sunlight to lighten the day. The song in your voice and the wisdom it gives puts form to the order that the chaos within me would erode into dust, to be sent outward to nothing on the wind.

I gave this promise not once but twice: To cherish and care for you and love you all my days. And I give that promise again and still again if need be to show that the choice we made that fall day in 1993 was the only right choice to be made and it shall always be so.

I LOVE YOU!

We will be together again.

Christina L. Dean served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam Era. She was a member of good standing in the Society for Creative Anachronism, She had worked for the U.S. Postal Service for 14 years and as a mail clerk for the Wyoming State Penitentiary for six years. She was currently a sales associate in the pet department at the Rapid City Walmart.

Christina departed this world leaving her husband, Lester L. Dean Jr.

A wake will be held at 7 p.m. today at Bethlehem Cave. Please bring your memories to share.

Services will be from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday, May 13, at Bethlehem Cave.

Inurnment will follow at 2:30 p.m. at Black Hills National Cemetery near Sturgis.

We ask that anyone attending please bring a single rose.