American soprano Charity “Sunshine” Tillemann-Dick passed away at a hospital in Baltimore on Apr. 23, 2019, surrounded by her family. She was 35.

Raised in Denver, Tillemann-Dick grew up in a large family with an appreciation for the performing arts. According to BBC, “she loved to sing from an early age, cherishing family trips to the symphony and opera.”

Originally planning to pursue a career in politics, she switched her focus to music after graduating from college and attended the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest.

Diagnosed with ideopathic pulmonary hypertension at age 20, the soprano’s heart swelled to three times its normal size. At that time her life expectancy was 2-5 years.

Despite being told by a doctor that she ought to stop singing, she still managed to pursue a successful international opera career, performing in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. She strapped her medication to her thigh so as to audition without worry: “Sopranos are unpredictable enough, without critical illness,” she remarked.

According to Washington Post, “Facing her mortality . . . she thought of her operatic heroines and felt that she was living one of their stories, ‘music and all.’ But the question was how to outsmart the tragedy.”

She underwent two life-saving lung transplants. Her initial concern was that the surgery would impact her voice – “I had spent a lifetime training my body and my lungs and my voice to work in sync and I knew I would lose all of that.”

Even after her body rejected the first transplant, she miraculously continued to sing, performing at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theatre with an oxygen tank and wheelchair in the wings. Following the second surgery, her album “American Grace” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s traditional classical charts in 2014.

In 2015, she was diagnosed with skin cancer, likely caused by anti-rejection drugs from her transplants.

She was a spokeswoman for the Pulmonary Hypertension Association and shared her story at TED Talks. She also wrote her book “The Encore: A Memoir in Three Acts” in 2017.

NY Daily News shared her mother’s Facebook post: “This morning, life’s curtain closed on one of its consummate heroines. Our beloved Charity passed peacefully with her husband, mother, and siblings at her side and sunshine on her face. Our hearts are broken. In this moment, the world is dark. But Charity’s rays extend far beyond her tragic finale on this earthly stage. Her light continues to illuminate the hearts of thousands and, in that way, Charity is with us always. She is our hero. We love her.”