Green, Anna "Tabitha" 1974 - 2020

GREEN

Posted By: Joy Moore (email)
Date: 7/15/2020 at 19:12:28

Anna “Tabita” Green died on July 9, 2020, after a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer. She was 46 years old. She is preceded in death by her father, Olle. She is survived by her husband, Todd; her daughter, Rebecka; her mother, Birgitta; her siblings, Priscilla, David, Tobias, and Miriam; and an extended family that includes aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, and brothers- and sisters-in law on both sides of the Atlantic.

Tabita was born in Säffle, Sweden, on January 16, 1974. She grew up in a pastor’s family, one inclined to lots of singing. Her fondest and most vivid childhood memories included singing with her family in various churches and musical groups. This love of singing never left her. She spent much of her life seeking out and building community through song and music.

Although Tabita spent much of her childhood in Sweden, she became enamored with the United States after living with her family in San Francisco for four years from 1978-1982. She eagerly returned to the United States as an exchange student in 1993, where she met Todd during his senior year at Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama. They courted in the college library and eventually began dating. The two of them bonded deeply after Todd’s mother passed away in December 1993. When Tabita sang at her funeral, Todd knew this was the person with whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life. In June 1994, they moved to Sweden, where they got engaged a couple of months later. They married in Värnamo, Sweden, on May 6, 1995.

Tabita and Todd built a life together in the United States. On March 28, 1997, their daughter, Rebecka, was born in Atlanta, Georgia. The family moved to Waco, Texas, one year later, where Tabita finished her college degree in computer science at Baylor University with a 4.0 GPA, all the while parenting a toddler.

The family subsequently moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and Brookfield, Wisconsin, before settling in Decorah, Iowa, in 2011. With this move, Tabita transitioned from a career as vice president at a software firm to work first as the Director of Web Content at Luther College and later as a business and digital marketing consultant.

Tabita was active in the Decorah community. She participated in singing groups and wellness initiatives, and she put considerable energy into efforts to municipalize the city’s electric utilities through Decorah Power. She believed in Decorah’s capacity to become a role model for the region and the nation in terms of its commitments to renewable and sustainable energy.

Tabita was also an author. In addition to active blogging, in 2015, she published Her Lost Year: A Story of Hope and a Vision for Optimizing Children’s Mental Health. The book chronicled her frustrations as a parent with modern psychiatry’s approach to children’s mental health and offered a blueprint for how to upgrade our society so that it optimizes the mental and emotional well-being of children.
Tabita will be remembered not only for her professional and civic achievements but for many other things that brought her joy: singing gospel music with her siblings and friends, including memorable years with the women’s group Common Souls in Texas; taking long walks while solving the world’s problems with her friends in Decorah; escaping into the fictional worlds of Anne of Green Gables, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Harry Potter; binge-watching Lost, Game of Thrones, and more than a few British crime dramas in the evenings with her family; playing with her spoiled Bichon Frise, Sophie; eating at cozy restaurants and going on romantic movie outings with Todd; clothes shopping and dreaming of a better world with Rebecka.

Tabita’s cancer diagnosis in May 2019 was a shock both to her and to all that knew her. What Tabita endured in the year that followed was a terrible disease that waged a relentless war on her body, passions, and spirit. Cancer triggered the full range of emotions within her: confusion and courage, fear and faith, sadness and serenity, despair and determination. In the end, she slipped gently into that good night, free at last from the cancer that consumed her but did not define her.

Our hearts overflow with love and gratitude as we remember our beautiful Tabita. May her spirit live on in all of us, and may we aspire to be the most authentic version of ourselves in this broken world because she showed us the way.

Dearest Tabita, we miss you terribly, and we love you fiercely. We’ll see you in another life.
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Donations can be made in Tabita’s honor to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network online at pancan.org/donate or by mail at 1500 Rosencrans Ave., Suite 200, Manhattan Beach, CA 90266.

Source: Schluter-Balik Funeral Home database

Winneshiek Obituaries maintained by Bruce Kuennen.
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