Friends and family of Dahphaney Maxine believed there was still so much life ahead of her.
At 20, the Abaco native was building a future as a second-year nursing student at the University of The Bahamas, surrounded by friends, teammates and a community that had watched her grow.
Now, those who loved her are left with memories and the painful reality that her future will remain unfinished.
Her mother, Crystal Bostwick, described a bond that went far beyond the traditional relationship between mother and daughter.
Dahphaney was her “chocolate baby”—the child who had been beside her through life’s highs and lows.
“The first beat outside of my body,” Bostwick wrote.
She described them as being like “peas in a pod,” sharing almost everything and knowing when their relationship needed to be one of mother and daughter and when it could simply be one of friendship.
The loss came just one day before the anniversary of Bostwick’s own mother’s death, adding another layer of pain to an already unbearable moment.
“I know that God would not put more on me than I can bear,” she wrote.
Maxine was found unresponsive in her university dormitory shortly after midnight on Monday and rushed to hospital after CPR was administered. She was later pronounced dead.
News of her death sent shockwaves through her family, the University of The Bahamas community and her hometown of Abaco.
But amid the heartbreak, those who knew Dahphaney are remembering her life.
Pastor Keven Pierre, who remembered meeting her when she first walked into his practice at Murphy Park eager to learn flag football, said he watched her grow into a young woman with a bright future ahead of her.
He remembered her willingness to learn, her development as an athlete and the pride that came with seeing her team win its first championship.
“Your future was so bright,” he wrote in a tribute. “Forever Tigers. Forever our champion.”
For Pierre, Dahphaney was a young person he had watched grow. And now, he said, it was difficult to accept that her life had been cut short.
Across Abaco, condolences have poured in.
North Abaco MP Kirk Cornish remembered Dahphaney as a promising young woman whose loss was being felt by her family, friends, teammates, former schoolmates and the wider UB community.
Her journey had taken her from Patrick J. Bethel High School in North Abaco to the University of The Bahamas, where she was pursuing nursing and building a future of her own.