Article content continued

“I would look up and see that little face print and think, I really need to clean my windows, but I don’t want to because that is just too cute,” Rebekah says.

Jillian had suffered two febrile seizures in the past, but hadn’t been tested for epilepsy yet. When she came down with a fever March 3, her parents kept her home from White Oaks elementary school and her dad, Steve, stayed home with her.

“We would always keep a very close eye on her, because of the febrile seizures,” Rebekah says.

Steve tucked Jillian in for a nap that day. Not much later, he checked on her. She had died in her sleep.

“The closest we can figure is sudden unexplained death by epilepsy,” Rebekah says. “I had gone into work and kissed her before I left, and thought nothing of it.”

Her daughter always was so lively. Rebekah laughs often when she describes her.

“She was spunky and quirky and very personable. She was very sing-songy and petite, just a really beautiful personality that drew people to her.”

Jillian loved small things, hair clips, and tiny unicorns and little princess dolls.

“Little toys she could sneak away in her pockets and take to school with her, or into her little purse to take to church with her. Those were her favourite things,” Rebekah says. “She had a great imagination. She would just get lost in her little miniature play for hours.”

A little delicate, even prissy, Rebekah says with a laugh, Jillian loved to play in the sprinkler and go on family hikes but wasn’t the tomboy type to get covered in dirt outside.

“Wherever we were as a family, she wanted to be.”

The week after Jillian died, the family stayed with friends.

“We just couldn’t bring ourselves to come home,” Rebekah says. “When we came home, that was one of the first things that I went to find, her little face on the glass.”