This memorial website was created in memory of our beloved daughter, sister, niece and friend, Kasmira "Kassie" Barrett, 29, born on September 26, 1986 and passed away on September 20, 2016. We will remember her forever.
Tributes
Leave a tributeMelissa
Hope you’re having fun wherever you are and keeping an eye on those beautiful girls of yours. All my love, always.
Ben
xXxXx
I’ve had so many milestones recently that I’ve wanted to share with you. I married a wonderful woman named Sneha and we now have a beautiful baby girl named Niva. You would have been the life of our wedding party! I know I’d be learning so much from you right now. You were such a natural mother. I think of you often and miss you so much.
Fee Fi Fo Fum
- Jonathon
I think of you often and i know that so many lives are dimmer because you are no longer in them, mines included. Sleep tight angel, i love you.
I feel your absence every day. I feel the better sweet joy of all the blessings your babies give me, and the pain that you’re not here to share in it with me. They are so much like you. As individuals and together. How can they be so different from each other and yet each of them like you?
Ivy asks about you more and more often. I think she’s afraid to admit how much she misses you, but she just can’t help herself. Sonya is more stoic. Or maybe, in a way, more fragile. I don’t think she’s ready to ask her questions yet. They have stopped asking if their dad is dead. Another painful issue for them. All I know to do is try and tell and show them all of the love they have around them. How perfect they are. What joy they bring to us all.
Amayah complains about them, but can’t stay away. She loves them so much. Despite the age difference they are the sisters she really needs in her life. You would be so proud of her. For every time she seems stressed buy them there are 10 times she engages them and feeds their imaginations and spirits. We are all Amayah, Liza, Terry, Nicole, Madison, Malik, Rocky, and I helping them to grow up happy and healthy. The God Parents have been wonderful too. Despite their having lives of their own they have (all 6) been making time to engage and appreciate them. You chose your friends so well.
We are struggling every day to create beauty and joy in their lives. I hope you are watching and understanding our fragile efforts to replicate what you would have given them.
I miss you Beauty! I love you for ever!!!!
xXxXx
[For anyone who knew John whom has found out via this medium, I humbly apologise, if you want to partake in the service tomorrow its at 16:00hrs (GMT)]
https://youtu.be/14P4z2yXpIE
Hope your having fun wherever you are, know that your missed, it was so nice to read your dads post the other day, I often think of him, i remember him calling me the "weird English kid" and waking you all up that time on NYD 2007 when I was still on GMT.
Take care Kassie, until we meet again, all my love always
xXx
I am writing to invite you all to a celebration of Kassie Barrett’s life this Friday at 3:00pm on Zoom. Here are the Zoom details:
Topic: Celebration of Kassie Barrett's Life
Time: Sep 25, 2020 03:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/99978717395?pwd=ZzBHNzlGZ2I4SFVQZlpFb1Jjc2tiZz09
Meeting ID: 999 7871 7395
Passcode: 416534
Dale and the girls will be joining us. We hope you all can make it too!
Please let me know if you would like to say anything during our time together this Friday. Feel free to send videos or images for me to share.
I may be reached at jonathon.epstein@gmail.com.
Best regards,
Jonathon
I am the man that I am today because of you. You are the reason I have learned how to find joy in my life. I have learned that the hardest things in life can be the most rewarding. You challenged me to be better at life in every way. I miss your smile, your laugh, your intelligence, your passion for life and your compassion for others.
You deserved so much more life than you got, but you certainly lived it to the fullest while you were with us. I am so proud of who you became in life. How you found your strength. Your unending curiosity. Your joy of living and learning.
I tell people that I am not religious, but I don't doubt Gods' existence. When you were born, they handed you to me and I knew I had just received the greatest blessing of my life. I knew that I could not have created such beauty and light. God made you and gave you to me to cherish. It was my job to preserve that beauty and light. With a lot of help from God, and your powerful spirit, I think I did just that. You were here for too little time, but your light shined bright, and continues to light the way for me.
Your "Beans" are growing up full of piss and vinegar. I hope you can see how happy and self confident they are. Every day they challenge Liza and I. Every day they make us laugh. They are doing so well in school, just like their mommy did. They love dressing up (today Sonya is a princess, and Ivy is a doctor). They love snuggling with Caesar (I still don't know how you saw his gentle, loving spirit when we met him ...but you did). I don't know if they're keeping me young or making me old before my time ;-). Sonya threatened Liza the other day (she was not happy with her lunch choice) "When you get old, I'm going to lock you in a room and feed you only peanut butter and jelly!" ...Sonya's favorite meal. Ivy loves to raise her hand during class, but always freezes when called upon. They both look so much like you in such different ways.
I try to tell them a story about you every day. I know they will never know you as I did, but I hope they will find strength and confidence in knowing who they came from. I tell them about how you lived your life with gusto. I cry almost every day when something reminds me of you. Often when I am very happy and realize you're not here to share in it with me. My pain feels like being underwater. Surrounded by the whole in my heart. Liza has taken on so much responsibility for "The Beans". If it were possible I love her even more now than before. I used to tell people that MY mom would "Stand in front of a charging Rhino" to protect me. Liza is every bit as protective of your Beans. I know that their lives would have been much richer if you were here, but they are surrounded by so much love. They were asked to fill out an "All About Me" package for school, and they both (independently) said they had TWO siblings (after Liza explained what "Siblings" were). Each other and Amayah. Amayah too tells people that they are her sisters. She is so patient and engaging with them.
I quickly came to understand that I will never have the words to tell people how much you meant to me. I fall short. Just saying you were always a blessing. I hope you can see how hard I try to do what you would want me to. I love and cherish your babies. I try to live my life to the fullest, and I love and cherish everyone who loves and cherishes my grandbabies.
I hope to hold you again some day. My goal is to be there for The Girls (all 3) until their 30th birthdays. Since you passed 6 days shy of yours. I think that is a significant age. Until then I try to be strong for you, and them.
I love you Beauty!!!!
All my love, always, speak soon
Ben
xXx
I can not believe its been 3 years since you passing. The girls are getting so big. i saw them over the summer and they remembered me!! Glad we are able to see and connect with them your Dad is doing an Awesome Job!! FB memories help keep your memory Alive, love you always!!
Feel very lost in life at the minute, and the realisation that your anniversary was approaching helped give some context and meaning almost to what the hell it is am doing at the minute. I was only thinking about your Dad the other day when the usual 9/11 programmes were everywhere on TV. Been speaking to Angie more recently, and Lottie had another baby, a little girl :)
I hope your ok wherever it is you ended up, and are having fun like only you can.
Two steps forward, one step back, quick like a turtle, lie on your back.
Love and miss you compadre. I hope your Dad, Man and babies are well.
We'll meet again, am sure.
Take care gorgeous girl
-Ben-
xXxXxXxXx
Leave a Tribute
Melissa
Kassie was one of my best friends and one of the few people I kept in touch with from our time at Alfred University. I love Kassie for so many reasons. Her laugh made me laugh, she was a creative thinker, she was sensitive and caring and forgiving, she knew how to really live. Here are a few of my favorite memories of times with Kassie:
Going on walks in the woods above the suites at Alfred, looking at leaves and little animals.
Visiting the cows in a hilltop field behind Kassie's home senior year. We ran down the hill singing songs together.
Getting stuck at Kassie's house on freezing cold snowy nights when her home was just so cozy and warm.
Making beats as we walked around NYC and laughing the whole time.
Going to Kassie's AHRC poetry and cooking classes with her and seeing her work with her clients.
Kassie's expressions when my sister and I were giving her a foot massage (my sister massaged one foot and I massaged the other).
Doing yoga with Kas on the floor in her apartment.
I will always love and miss Kassie. She was and always will be one of my best friends. We shared memories and now I will hold on to them and pass them along to her little girls.
With love, Stephanie
Kassie's Birth
Kassie was born on Friday September 26th in 1986. I was petrified of the responsability of fatherhood. Tried to steel my nerves for the days events. She was suposed to be premature. I told myself "it's going to look like a lizard, but you have to pretend it's cute". I waited outside the delivery room. Scared to death. After an eternity they wheeled out Kassie's mother Holly, and handed Kassie to me. I looked down at this roll of blankets and saw two big brown eyes, blinking from the light, looking up at me. Her lips were pursed in a little "O". She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. My first thought was "I'm in trouble now!". I knew my life, as I had known it, was over. From that moment on I understood that my first responsability was not to myself anymore.
Being a parent has been the hardest and most rewarding job I have ever had. Kassie and her brothers saved me from a wasted life. I saw the man I wanted to be in those beautiful brown eyes. Kassie's nick-name was "The Little Beauty" (given to her by my father ...who she named "Bubba"). Later shortened to "The Beauty", or just "Beauty". a more fitting name there never was. she brought beauty into my life every day of hers. Magically she continues to do so through her daughters, and her memory. Many of her friends know this nick-name. Not so many know her first nick-name. One of her first words was "Duckdoo". A phrase I liked to imagine as "Thank you" when she was very little. I used to kiss her forhead and say "nighty night, Duckdoo" when I put her to bed. I kissed her forhead in the funeral home and said it one last time. God give me the strength to go on until I can see those brown eyes again! I love you Kassie!!!!
Kassie's Visit to California - October 2014
Kassie came out to Northern California to visit her two aunts, me and Lynn. It was almost exactly 20 years since her first visit, when she was 8-years-old. This time, Kassie wanted to see the redwoods. So we took her up to Muir Woods. We also saw the special Ai Weiwei exhibit on Alcatraz, went to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, toured the Winchester Mystery House, crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, hung out at the Dia des los Muertos festival, and carved Halloween pumpkins.
Lynn and I didn't know it, but Kassie had just learned she was pregnant before her visit. So, Ivy and Sonya, your first visit to California was when you were two tiny "beans," as your Grandpa calls you.