Kimberly Ann Dickey was a wife, mother, home-maker, beautiful artist of canvas paintings and a talented seamstress. Most recently, as her mobility was hampered by illness and associated treatments, she studied and honed an oft-coveted talent for beautifully detailed nail art.
Kimberly was born March 9, 1971 in Fresno, California to Thomas and Diana Bauer. Kim was the second of two children following her brother Tom Bauer who was a few years older.
As a young girl, Kimberly attended Kerman Covenant Church. This was the beginning of a life-long faith in God and Jesus Christ as her personal savior. Kim sang periodic solos in front of the church congregation and fondly remembered the church’s pastor who personally drove a school bus to pick up kids in the community who wanted to go to church and take them home afterwards.
Kim attended Kerman High School in a small town just outside of Fresno. Kim competed on the swim team (as did her brother) and swimming tournaments became a family affair during the school year.
Kim frequently described spending her summers as a child and young teen constantly wearing her swimsuit to enjoy the family’s backyard pool. Kim stayed active with her church through high school. As a teenager, she was often called just “Bauer” by close friends.
After graduation, Kim attended Fresno Community College. Her initial interest in studying art restoration was indicative of her creativity and desire to improve the world around her.
She loved her mother Diana, very much, and together they enjoyed riding roller coasters, watching horror movies, and discovering new places for lunch and shopping.
In March 1989, Kimberly met her future husband, Cameron Dickey of Portland, Oregon. Though they didn’t know it yet, their meeting would indirectly influence their lives for four more years before a fateful first date in July 1993. Under 4th of July fireworks…overlooking the Columbia River…Cameron and Kimberly started a relationship that would span 25 years, three states and four children. Married on August 20th, 1994 (just over a year after their first date), Kimberly worked in data entry for a Portland title company as her husband worked as a bank teller and management trainee for First Interstate Bank.
In 1995, Kimberly and her husband relocated back to Fresno to be close to her family and friends there. Kimberly took a position leading the accounts payable department of PrimeStar TV, a satellite television company while her husband continued working in the financial services industry.
In 1998, Kimberly and Cameron welcomed their first child, McKenna, to the family. The birth of their daughter fatefully coincided with the purchase of Kim’s employer by Direct TV and a large severance package that enabled the young parents to get by on one income.
In 1999, they added daughter Cassidy to the family. The couple famously hastened their first-born daughter to start sleeping in her own room (rather than theirs) shortly before the second daughter came home from the hospital and took McKenna’s place sleeping with Mom and Dad. Kimberly and Cameron didn’t sleep well (or alone again) until about late 2000.
In March of 2000, Cameron was offered a senior management position with a credit union in Portland, Oregon, and the young family relocated back to the Pacific Northwest. In their new home in Oregon City, Oregon, Kim kept herself busy being a mom, sewing for friends, neighbors, and events at the church, and occasionally doing elaborate home redecorating and remodeling projects (some that her husband knew about and others that he “discovered” after short business trips). Kim’s friends were often stunned by her skills, her willingness to try new things even if she wasn’t sure how to do them, and the beautiful results of her work.
It was around this time that Kimberly and her husband began discussing expanding their family through adoption. Kimberly signed up to receive a monthly newsletter about adoption from the Oregon Foster Care system. They also explored the possibility of international adoptions following a missions trip to Kenya, Africa by Mr. Dickey in 2003 and 2004.
In 2004, Kimberly and her husband decided to expand their family again (though not yet through adoption). Kimberly became pregnant with their third child and the couple decided not to find out the baby’s gender until the delivery. Friends, family, and doctors all predicted another girl for the Dickey’s. And on March 30th, 2005, they were universally proven correct with the birth of daughter Ella Diane Dickey.
In 2010, nearly 10 years after first discussing adopting a child, Kimberly and her husband adopted their son, Dillon James Dickey. With three girls and a boy, the Dickey’s agreed that their family was officially complete.
After 12 years in the Pacific Northwest, Kimberly’s husband was offered a position as President/CEO with Cy-Fair Federal Credit Union in Houston, Texas in 2012. Kimberly, always game for an “adventure” and unwaveringly supportive of her husband’s career, began packing up their home of nearly a decade and preparing it for sale.
In the final weeks in Portland, Kim pushed through back pain and fatigue to complete the relocation. Upon landing in Houston, just a few days before Thanksgiving 2012, the couple began to assemble their new life in Cypress, Texas.
Over the next several weeks and months, Kimberly continued to experience fatigue and back pain. Her primary care physician prescribed pain relievers and muscle relaxers. Nothing helped. Remarkably, through four months of doctor visits, the doctor never ordered an x-ray or digital imaging of her back.
On a fateful night in late May 2013, her pain grew so excruciating that Kim had to go the emergency room at Methodist West hospital in Katy. After several tests and some x-rays, a very serious and somber emergency room doctor told Kim that the x-rays showed abnormalities on her spine. They recommended that she see an “oncologist” in the next few days. When the doctor left the room, the couple confusingly questioned each other …”Isn’t an oncologist…isn’t that a cancer doctor?”
The following week, after a breast exam and biopsy, Kim was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer. The cancer, previously undetected and undiagnosed, had metastasized and was attacking her bones.
Over the next nearly six years, Kim fought to stay with her family for as long as her body would permit. She endured multiple IV chemotherapy treatments, hormone therapy to deprive the cancer (and consequently her body) of estrogen so that the cancer was starved and pushed back (and pushing her into menopause at age 43), toxic oral medicines to poison the cancer, multiple radiation treatments to scorch the cancer from her bones and reduce the sometimes excruciating pain of tumors and fractures on her ribs, spine, and pelvis, multiple blood transfusions amounting to an estimated 40-50 units of blood and 13 bags of blood platelets, spinal surgery to inject a balloon and then surgical cement into her spine to strengthen fractured vertebrae, and another surgery to chemically embolize her spleen (in the hope of increasing her body’s storage and sustaining production of white blood cells and blood platelets).
For all that knew her, they agree…Kimberly Ann Dickey was a WARRIOR…the bravest mom and wife that a family could ever hope for. She endured those procedures and toxic medicines for six years, enduring pain that was excruciating and unrelenting at times to stay with her beloved kids and husband as long as she could. In her heart, she knew that heaven and painlessness awaited her when she would be reunited with her Lord and Savior…but she postponed that relief as long as she could.
The story of Kimberly Dickey’s life spanned 47 short years…but it includes a cast of people that she loved and who loved her immeasurably…for her compassion, for her humor, for her creativity…for her “I don’t care what people think” spirit…for her boundless love of her children and husband. She was an example of faith in God and grace under terrible pressure. She made a promise to one man 24 years ago and kept it through richer and poorer, sickness and health, and through better and worse. Her legacy includes three beautiful daughters and a handsome son. As a wife and mother, she helped to make 10 residences into 10 homes, lived in 3 different states, owned 5 dogs, 3 cats, 6 fish, 1 bunny, 1 guinea pig, co-owned 18 vehicles, traveled to Kenya, Fiji, Disneyland, the San Juan Islands, Hawaii, Panama, Cancun, London, lost a parent and shared the challenges of growing older with her husband including weight gain, weight loss, hair loss, grey hair, career disappointments, career achievements, tears of joy, tears of sadness, old friends across the years, new friends made within the year, hospital stays for babies entering our life, hospital stays when cancer began to take her life, scared moments where all she could do was pray to God, wonderful moments where all she could do was lift praises to God, meals charged to her Nordstrom's card when she and her husband didn’t have much money, anniversary dinners at Perry's when they had money to enjoy luxuries, pool-side breakfast in a villa in Cancun, lunch together in her car by the park in downtown Portland, dinner on the beach in Fiji, and alternate lives that could have but didn’t happen in Scranton, Columbus, Chandler, L.A., Africa, and Seattle. And an amazing but challenging life in Cypress that became her last stop in this world.
As her family and friends…we miss her SO badly. Our hearts are broken. But she isn’t broken…not any longer. She is renewed and pain free. Dear Lord, please give her our love. Kiss and hug her for us. We will try to live up to her example and, if we succeed, we will have many worthwhile stories to share with her when we are reunited again.
The song below was one that Kim wanted her family and friends to reflect upon when her time here was done…
“Home” – by Chris Tomlin
This world is not what it was meant to be
All this pain, all this suffering
There's a better place waiting for me
In Heaven
Every tear will be wiped away
Every sorrow and sin erased
We'll dance on seas of amazing grace
In Heaven
In Heaven
I'm goin' home
Where the streets are golden
Every chain is broken
Oh I wanna go
Oh I wanna go
Home
Where every fear is gone
I'm in your open arms
Where I belong
Home
Lay down my burdens, I lay down my past
I run to Jesus, no turning back
Thank God Almighty, I'll be free at last
In Heaven
In Heaven
I'm goin' home
Where the streets are golden
Every chain is broken
Oh I wanna go
Oh I wanna go
Home
Where every fear is gone
I'm in your open arms
Where I belong
Blinded eyes
Will finally see
The dead will rise
On the shores of eternity
The trumpet will sound
The angels will sing
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
I am Goin' home
Where the streets are golden
Every chain is broken
Oh I wanna go
Oh I wanna go
Home
Where every fear is gone
I'm in your open arms
Where I belong
Where I belong
I'm goin' home
I'm goin' home
I'm on my way home
I'm goin' home
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