Cecelia Claire Murphy

1984 - 2022

Cecelia Claire Murphy
November 29, 1984 - September 27, 2022
Hillsborough, North Carolina - Cecelia Claire Murphy-McMillan, 37, adored daughter, sister, aunt, fiancée, and niece departed this life September 27, 2022. She was prodigiously gifted in many areas, including especially the visual arts, linguistics, and academics. She was fluent in several European languages.
She had an entrepreneur's spirit as well, and, after graduation from Georgetown University in 2007, created for herself careers in both Germanic languages-to-English translation and decorative interior painting. She traveled extensively and lived abroad for much of her late teens, her twenties, and into her thirties.
In recent years, she manifested her creative gifts in the production of bold and virtuosic murals, paintings, and fabric and wallpaper designs, with commissions in San Antonio, New York, New Orleans, Palm Beach, among other places.
She was radiant, a generous and loving family member and friend, with a playful, brave, and delightful spirit. She experienced sporadic periods of depression in recent years and strove with great courage to overcome them.
Her adventurous and thoroughly authentic life was an inspiration to her family and to her many friends in this country and around the world.
She is preceded in death by her father Dougald McMillan III, Chapel Hill, NC; by her infant nephew Theodore Mulhollan, Durham, NC; by her grandparents Anne and John Murphy, Charlotte, NC; and Aleze Bishop, Leland, MI, and Dougald McMillan, Jr, Arkadelphia, AR.
She is survived by her parents Laura and David Frankstone, Hillsborough, NC; her sister Kate Murphy-McMillan (Douglas Hollingsworth) Durham, NC; her fiancé Gabriel Pickard, San Francisco, CA; her brother Lee Frankstone (Helen) Raleigh, NC; her sister Susan Hargett (Shaw) Stafford, VA; her sister Jennifer McMillan (Les Frye) Chapel Hill, NC; her brother Dougal McMillan (Ursula) Wellesey, MA; and many nephews, nieces, cousins, uncles, and aunts.
Late Fragment
By Raymond Carver
And did you get what you wanted
From this life, even so?
I did.
And what was it you wanted?
To call myself beloved,
To feel myself beloved on the earth.
Cecelia, beloved always, deeply mourned, in our hearts forever.