A day later than intended, but still in my heart & awareness.  I'll never need a reminder, yet my calendar will always have a symbol, 🙏😭🌈💐♡COLLEEN♡💐

All of you are wonderful people. I'm glad she had each of you in her life.  Take good care!  Blessings ~~

Colleen had a wicked sense of humour which was one of the many wonderful things i loved about her. She, Galey, Kaye and I went rafting in North Carolina.we each had our own duckies as it was late in the season. The guide said if you tip over DO NOT HOLD ON TO A ROCK.  So we got to the end of the run and everyone made their way to the shore.  Galey, Coleen  and I are eating cookies and drinking lemonade when we look across the river and see  this desperate woman HOLDING ON TO A ROCK.  There is water going up her nose and rushing over her head and Galey, ever the lifeguard , exclaims, omg, that’s my friend Kaye, I have to save her! Colleen and I? We bust out laughing  tears out our eyes  but we love Kaye no less than  Galey! The guide yelled “Let go of the rock”  which Kaye did and swam to shore .  But  do you love Coleen? Who, as Mary Marshall  said, was the best friend ever.  And she was  

Loving thoughts of our dear childhood friend, Colleen, on her birthday, today, Thursday, Nov. 27, 2025.  

Love & Light, Always💖

~Debbie King & Family

Sunday, November 27, 2022:  

Happy Birthday, Colleen!!  Thinking of you and your family today - Sending all of you love .  

Many great memories - from a long time ago, but not now nor ever forgotten.   ~Debbie (Deborah King)

Sending love and condolences from the Gator nation. You’re so loved and missed Colleen. We will continue to stand together in all types of weather. 

🧡💙🐊

I am so sorry I couldn’t post anything sooner; I’ve been ill since the 4th of February, just recovered within the last week, and then out of sheer necessity back to work. Sigh… and with such a heavy heart… I was at work on the morning of Feb. 2nd, when my cell phone pinged, causing me to glance over at it on my side desk...Colleagues heard an audible howl come from my work space.. Visceral, and, despite the assumed inevitability of it all, still shocking when the final actually happened.. Yet I had to hang on through a long day, then made it home and could finally let go into big baby sobs - like when I lost my mother - the tears didn't stop for a long time that evening, flooded with memories (... flashbacks... like old photos rolling past...) ... the haunted houses we explored in an open field, sure we'd found something significant for the authorities; The Monkees - Micky Dolenz vs Davy Jones, choreographing routines to every song on their first album, and making Mrs. Zahn (sweet, patient Bev) be our audience....Ripping our fake & plastic 88-cents-store fingernails off in pre-teen hysteria during the live concert (yes, the Monkees, not those Beatles...). Tears of angst and joy streaming down. (Kids, ask your Aunt Kathy what she recalls.. I hope she still holds some fun memories... Please forgive me, Kath, for drawing devil-horns on Mickey's girlfriend's (Samantha, the British model...) photo in your room - I'd give anything back for the time lost while we, well, mainly me, I, stopped speaking to you!)  Nevertheless, a lot of precious fun and innocent times, for sure.

I will always love my childhood friend Colleen, and dear sisters Kathy and Tracey. Ditto for Bev and Dick, and Chet and his family, too.

On the 2nd, I had to stop and write down some thoughts in my work calendar, copied herein:

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Colleen Autumn Zahn

Dear, Dear Cherished Friend;

Blessings, God Speed:

What a wonderful and divine life you’ve had. I will always cherish and miss our times as kids, and as young adults.

Give my love to your Precious Beloveds, Bev and Tracey, and of course that includes dear Susie (Sutterlin; sister-in-law) and others whose names I do not have, and, to My Mother (“Jerrey”) – who is so happy to see you!!

To Her Family and Friends: Every blessing, and my deepest heart-felt Love and Sympathies to beloved and gifted Kathy; AND to the lights of Colleen’s life - both who are so sweet, adorable, brilliant and beloved beyond words: to Landon and to Autumn - she shared that her greatest regret is ultimately not being here any longer physically to look after you and share in your ongoing lives over the ensuing years. Every mother's greatest fear and worry. It's right now likely a small comfort, but over time you'll realize how close she is still with you, and always will be. Always. Through thick and thin. She's in your DNA, your souls. She's truly an angel of even greater power now. Celebrate in that!

To Col’s sweet nephews and niece, (forgive me, I don't recall names at the moment) - know she adores and loves you all; and of course last but not least, to awesome, brilliant, intrepid, uber-accomplished Chet (“Jeeters”); and Col’s father, Richard (Dick)... And to all of Col’s many long-time new and valued friends in her many years of married life as Wife, Mother, Friend and Beyond...:

How fortunate and blessed to have her in this realm as long as you did. We are ALL blessed to have known, loved and cherished Colleen...(despite I'm using past-tense here, there IS a future, as Love (Life, essence of) never dies, but evolves,...

Divine. Sacred. ETERNAL. 🙏🌹❤

"Debbie" King