Engaged Edmonton couple Miranda Sharp and Ashton Wilson had big dreams.
“We weren’t perfect, we were real, but there was never a day we didn’t reach for each other through joy, through struggle, through growth,” Sharp said on Thursday at their home in east Edmonton.
“He deserved this life and he was so intentional in how he loved, how he parented, how he planned our future.”
Sharp’s family is in mourning after a crash claimed Wilson’s life. He was driving with their daughter when the collision happened this week on the south side.
Life at Miranda Sharp’s home is carrying on as normal as can be, as she plays with her dog and took her daughter to her pre-kindergarten graduation on Thursday morning.
But just two days ago, their world was upended when her fiancé was killed.
“I was hysterically crying and not being able to accept that this was reality, it didn’t feel like the world was real anymore,” said Sharp.
Wilson was out of the house on Tuesday with their four-year-old daughter, Charlize, and before he left, he called Sharp.
“I knew he was coming straight home. I just said ‘Goodbye’, and he said, ‘I’ll see you soon’, and that was that,” Sharp said.
That was the last time Sharp spoke to her partner, whom she had become engaged to this past spring during a family vacation to Disney World, after they had been together for the past five years.
“It was magic, something we had dreamed of. We were planning to get married next summer and had even started the process of growing our family with a (sperm) donor.”
The couple’s relationship started when their daughter was just four months old, and he quickly became Charlize’s “papa.”
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“From that moment on, she was the absolute centre of this universe. He lived for her, he lived for us and for our family,” Sharp said through tears. “He was gentle and playful and protective and completely devoted.
“Watching him be a father was like watching someone fulfil the purpose they were born for.”
An undated photo of Ashton Wilson and their daughter as a baby.
Sharp said Wilson was also a natural born leader and teacher.
“Through DIY Training Centre, he had just secured a contract to teach at the School for the Deaf, something that meant the world to him, not only because he could use his signing skills, but because inclusion and accessibility were values he lived by and carried into our family,” she said, explaining their daughter is on the Autism spectrum and it meant a lot to be able to help other people who face learning challenges.
“Doors were just starting to open and he was ready to walk through them all with joy, with love and with us.
“He had so much more to give.”
When Wilson was driving home on Whitemud Drive Tuesday afternoon, he pulled over to check something on the vehicle near the 111th street overpass.
When he was standing outside of the van, he was struck by an oncoming semi truck also headed east.
Sharp felt like something was wrong when they hadn’t returned home, so she went for a drive.
“I was saying my prayers and just thinking of Charlize. You don’t think the adult, the adult to me, was supposed to be the one that was automatically going to be safe,” Sharp said.
Then she arrived at the crash scene and went straight to the ambulance.
“It was an instant relief, like my baby’s ok. But almost as soon as that relief came, I was like ‘There’s one ambulance here, where’s Ashton?'”
EMS and the Edmonton Police Service responded to the collision, but Wilson was declared dead on scene. Police said the four-year-old was taken to the Stollery Children’s Hospital as a precaution.
The past 48 hours have been a whirlwind. Sharp is trying to honour Wilson by staying strong.
“Gotta be there for my daughter, our daughter was our world, and he wouldn’t want me to slow down,” she said.
Wilson is being remembered as a bright light in his community, and his fiancée is honouring the person he was.
“Ashton didn’t just love me, he healed me. He held space for the pain I came with and helped me become someone I didn’t think I could be. With him I was safe, I was whole, I was seen. I used to tell him that he felt like a reward for all the hurt I’d survived before him.
“Even now I carry what he gave me, the way I move through this grief, the way show up for our daughter. It’s all shaped by the strength and love he poured into our family.”
Wilson built the house the family lives in, and Sharp said this is one way she’ll be able to remember her fiancé every day.
He was well-known around their neighbourhood for being helpful and supporting others in need.
Although it was difficult for her to share her story, it was important for Sharp to spread her fiancé’s message.
“In honouring his true identity and his courage for living as a transgender man in this world,” said Sharp.
“Ashton will always be my person. I will love him in this life and whatever comes after.”
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