Friends, family remember her energetic, accepting spirit

BETHEL – Before mourners released the purple balloons they clutched in the cemetery as they stood around the casket of Cynthia Beatson, her husband spoke of his love for her.

“You were the best thing that ever happened to me,” Doug Beatson said, adding a quick prayer and then releasing his balloon.

People craned their necks to watch the flock of purple – one of Cindy’s favorite colors – float up into the cloudless sky before they disappeared from sight.

Before the burial, the Bethel Alliance Church was crowded Saturday morning for Beatson’s funeral service. The 43-year-old mother was killed Sept. 4, one of four people slain in a Labor Day weekend killing spree.

Christian Nielsen, a 31-year-old former chef at the Sudbury Inn in Bethel, has been charged in the deaths.

The Rev. Joseph E. Daniels, the pastor for St. Joseph’s Paris in Bridgton, led the Roman Catholic service. Beatson’s family and friends filled the front rows of the packed church on the outskirts of town on Route 26. Carlee, the Beatson’s 12-year-old daughter, wore a sparkly white shawl draped around her small shoulders and sat snuggled close to her father throughout most of the service, her head bent toward his.

After the nearly 90-minute ceremony, a long line of cars crawled through town to bury Beatson at Riverside Cemetery in Bethel.

Daniels told the mourners that in the wake of the local tragedy, people had two choices: a spirit-inspiring one or a spirit-deadening one.

“The spirit-inspiring choice is the one that remembers the life of Cindy Beatson, as well as James Whitehurst, Julie Bullard and Selby Bullard, with gratitude,” he said, naming the other victims in the gruesome Labor Day weekend killings. “This choice will allow one to live and embrace life to the full force empowered by their memory.”

He went on to describe Beatson as not having missed much in her life.

“After putting herself so well together in her short years, she was a perfect blend of youthful exuberance and tested wisdom,” Daniels said.

She studied at Babson College, became an expert seamstress and fostered a passion for design and style that brought beauty to her family’s home, he said, as well as made her locally renown as a master Halloween-costume designer.

A passionate hiker, skier and golfer, she approached her hobbies with her characteristic ardor and pizzazz. One friend, Pam O’Reilly, said at the service that one of Beatson’s nicknames was, “Country-club Cindy.”

“She would put on one of her favorite outfits, order up a summer splash, and looked really sharp,” O’Reilly said, describing Beatson’s prelude to a game of golf.

Beatson had also recently earned her real estate license and was working as a sales agent at Apple Tree Realty.

Those who spoke, including four close female friends, all remembered Beatson’s gifts of empathy and warmth.

“She embraced her individuality,” Daniels said, and made others comfortable with their uniqueness.

Maggie Cabral, Beatson’s sister-in-law, said, “It is so hard to say goodbye, to let go of a person who meant so much to so many people.”

She continued, “Her life was transformed when she met and fell in love with Doug and then again when she had Carlee.”

“When someone dies you don’t get over it by forgetting, you get over it by remembering,” she said. “We must embrace life in all its beauty as Cindy did. This is her lasting gift to all of us.”

Joanne Andrews, another friend, said Beatson’s spirit would be watching over Sunday River Ski Resort and all her well-traveled trails there.

“Be prepared to get your snow shovels ready,” Andrews said.

And another friend, Patti Lally Mutrie, said she had known Beatson since the two were 1.

Mutrie said that Beatson, originally from Sudbury, Mass., came to Bethel in her late 20s with the intention of staying only one ski season, but the moment she saw Doug, she fell in love. And Bethel became her true home. “It was where she belonged,” Mutrie said about the small, tight-knit town.

Mutrie said Beatson had a lesson to teach everyone, the one she was put on earth to pass on, which was her unconditional acceptance of others.

“She chose not to walk in anger and resentment, like so many of us do,” Mutrie said. “She had a beautiful heart and a loving soul, and it is unbearable that we have to let her go.”