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Danielle Marquez-Valle was riding in this truck when the driver lost control and Marquez-Valle was killed.© Courtesy of the Utah Highway Patrol Danielle Marquez-Valle was riding in this truck when the driver lost control and Marquez-Valle was killed.
For months, Danielle Marquez-Valle had been preparing for her mother’s death.

When 68-year-old Shirley Madrid died earlier this month after a “battle with a long-standing illness,” according to her obituary, Marquez-Valle was filled with an overwhelming emptiness, but found comfort in her faith.

“I will have to live each new day, knowing I can’t look forward to the next time I will talk to her or see her beautiful face,” Marquez-Valle wrote on Facebook.

On the same page, Marquez-Valle described herself as “my mother’s daughter,” and her profile is filled with mother-daughter photos and recent tributes to the woman she loved.

Marquez-Valle planned to pay her mother a final tribute Saturday, but she never got a chance. At around 7 a.m., while en route to her mother’s memorial, Marquez-Valle was killed when the driver of the truck she was riding in lost control on an icy patch of road, according to the Utah Highway Patrol.

The area had been hit by a mixture of wintry rain, snow and ice, making driving conditions hazardous, and the Highway Patrol said the truck slid into a median before rolling multiple times.

Marquez-Valle was ejected from the vehicle and died, a UHP statement said.

The driver and another passenger were seriously injured in the crash and airlifted to a local hospital.

“In any kind of inclement weather — whether it’s snowy or icy or slushy or even just some rain or wet roads — just slow down, just take your time,” UHP Sgt. Nathan Croft told ABC affiliate KTVX.

Sgt. Todd Royce, a spokesman for the UHP, told The Washington Post that troopers initially thought that Madrid’s ashes were in an urn at the site of the crash. After a through search, Royce said, police confirmed that the ashes were never in the vehicle.

“None of the troopers found anything that looked like an urn,” he said. “If we find out something of value like that is at a scene, we’ll look deeper into it. It’s the right thing to do.”

He added that circumstances surrounding the crash were “very tragic and rare,” but something that “does happen” on occasion.

© Screengrab from Facebook
Days after her mother’s death, Marquez-Valle set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for her mother’s funeral. As she made arrangements, she turned to Facebook to thank family members and friends for their support.

“My mom is smilin’ down from heaven!” she wrote. “Blessings on your day.”

She noted that she’d moved back home to Utah last year from Texas to be with her mother “in the last stages of her life.” She assured those that loved her mother that she was “celebrating with her lord” and “shouting AMEN!”

She added a final quote from Ecclesiastes:

“To everything there is a season, a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck what has been planted; a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to keep and a time to cast away.”