This story comes from a place of deep love, crushing grief, and renewed hope. In January of 2019, my daddy, David, was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. At our first oncology appointment, the story of the dandelion came into being. The doctor explained to us that the tumor was like a dandelion. At that initial appointment, the news was considered good, the tumor was contained inside the pancreas and there was actually hope that it could be removed. “However,” he explained, “think of this tumor like a dandelion. If we can remove it in its flower stage then we’re looking at a decent chance of recovery. If the dandelion flower spores though, and becomes like the fluffy version that we blow on, then it will spread quickly.” With that knowledge and explanation we updated the CaringBridge journal and the thousands of folks following his cancer journey began to post and reply with messages of getting rid of that nasty dandelion weed. The day of surgery arrived and dozens of friends and family filled the surgical waiting room. Hours later the surgeon asked my mom, sister and myself to come into the private waiting room. Our hearts sank as he explained the tumor had grown too close to major arteries and could not be removed surgically. Our plan switched to destroy the weed with everything in our arsenal: prayer, clean food, meds, chemo and radiation. But first daddy had to heal from the surgery.

After a few months of fighting the dandelion, on April 19, 2019, I wrote this in the CaringBridge journal:

David and the Dandelion

Journal Entry — April 19, 2019

Tatum has a t-shirt that says “Stop calling the wildflowers weeds.” They’re beautiful right? Just growing randomly alongside the road, adding pops of color to the scenery. If they were growing in our yard we would want a lawn pro spraying to get rid of them. But I think instead of looking at daddy’s dandelion as an ugly horrid weed- I’ll look at it as a pop of bright beautiful yellow; the color of sunshine ☀️ and happy faces 😀, the color that represents Hope. Yes, that dandelion inside daddy changed form and released its nasty spores throughout his body. That part of it is definitely an ugly horrid weed. But the initial dandelion slowed us down and brought our family together and brought hundreds and hundreds to their knees in prayer. My sweet, wonderful daddy. My hero. My heart.

A few days later, I wrote this.

Blow and Make a Wish-

Journal Entry — April 23, 2019

When I was a little girl, I wasn’t that interested in the yellow dandelion but I loved when it changed over to the “fuzzies”, so that I could make a wish and blow.

We are making our last wishes in the next several hours as we say goodbye to daddy.

Please keep our family in your hearts and prayers. We are asking that no more visitors come by the home but we are answering texts and FaceBook messages as we are able.

If you have a dandelion with fuzzies in your yard, pick it and blow- and make a wish for daddy to have a beautiful singing voice in Heaven. 💜

We are #COFFMANSTRONG!

On April 24, 2019 in the dark hours of predawn, daddy died surrounded by his girls and many others who loved him deeply. Throughout the following weeks our social media feeds filled with videos of people of all ages making a wish as they blew the beautiful fuzzies into the wind. Dandelion pictures and t-shirts were delivered to us. I even have a tattoo of a dandelion on my forearm now, with the stem created by his handwriting taken from his diary entry with “I love and miss my girls”.