In Memoriam: Anne-Christine Johnson

Wherever she moved, Anne-Christine carried always a copy of Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, her favorite book. In it, C.S. Lewis advises one must speak with their own voices and express actual desires, being for good or ill itself, not any mask.

Anne-Christine found her own face.

She will never be defined by the terrible act that ended her life in December 2016, devastating friends and family. She was both the wondrous Psyche and troubled Orual, who found redemption and God’s love at the end of her own life.

Anne-Christine was brilliant, witty and beautiful, beloved by Molly, her younger sister, by everyone in her family, by her coterie of close friends and most of all by her two amazing boys.

“She wasn’t into fake, boring people. She surrounded herself with interesting people who didn’t color inside the lines. People who, like herself, didn’t fit into a cookie-cutter mold.”

These words, written by a close friend who knew Anne-Christine only toward the end of her brief life, is the Anne-Christine each of us will carry close to our hearts unto the end of our own lives.

Obituaries are about stats and statistics but this is about the famous dash between the dates, memorializing her love of reading, journaling, writing poetry, of her penchant for red lipstick and high heels, her effortless chic, and her love of beaches and the sea, and her eloquence and pithy insights over a glass of red wine and cigarettes.

Anne-Christine was a mystical Pisces, a loving and compassionate woman who lived life on her terms and never had a bad word for anyone. Remember her for her utter dedication to her children, her truest legacy.

Anne-Christine was born into love on March 2, 1986, in Metairie, Louisiana, to Lee and Stephanie Johnson. She also lived in Houston, Calgary, Amarillo before settling near the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to Texas Equusearch and Bay Area Turning Point in Webster, Texas. Or, turn on David Bowie.

“She made beauty all round her. When she trod on mud, the mud was beautiful; when she ran in the rain, the rain was silver. When she picked up a toad—she had the strangest and, I thought, unchanciest love for all manner of brutes—the toad became beautiful.”

–Til We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis

Anne-Christine carried a copy of this book everywhere she went. She discovered it when she was just 12-years-old. In it, Lewis reimagines the tale of Cupid and Psyche. Psyche’s sister Orual asks, “How can the gods meet us face to face till we have faces?” In the weeks before the murder, Anne-Christine found hers. She decided to leave Shaun Hardy and establish a new life with her son. Then he killed her.