In the coming weeks, the donations people send in Katie’s memory are enough to cover Anjelin’s sponsorship for the next eight years.
25
TEMBER’S EIGHTH-GRADE GRADUATION CEREMONY from Carl Sandburg Junior High has been at the top of our family’s radar in recent weeks. Tuesday—graduation day—has now sneaked up on us amid all that has happened, but we cannot miss this opportunity to celebrate Tember.
Each eighth grader’s family was allotted a mere four tickets to the commencement, but the school scores us nine extra tickets to accommodate everyone in town—thank you, office ladies at Carl Sandburg!—and on Tuesday afternoon, we shift from planning a memorial for one daughter to celebrating the graduation of another.
In the upstairs bathroom, Bethany helps Tember get ready, just as Katie helped Tember prepare for the dance last Friday. At five o’clock, our youngest girl descends the stairs, wearing not the graduation dress she and I purchased a couple of weeks back but a summery white dress of Katie’s. Her long brown hair is piled into a mass of curls. Bethany has snipped sprigs of baby’s breath from some of Katie’s bereavement bouquets and tucked them into Tember’s hair—her subtle way of making sure Katie is present for this milestone event in their sister’s life. A pair of Katie’s mother-of-pearl earrings dangle from Tember’s ears as well. As I watch her walk down the stairs, I blink and swallow hard. But when I notice her feet, I can’t help but smile: Above her new graduation shoes, her right ankle is wrapped in an ace bandage from where she whacked her anklebone with a baseball bat in gym class a few days back. With a slight limp, she stands balanced between childhood and womanhood—and she looks stunning.
Thirteen of us—five McConkeys, seven Vaudreys, and Adam—stream out to the front yard for pictures. The afternoon sun casts a golden glow, making everything look as surreal as it feels. Scott snaps pictures of our graduate; then we take some family shots—our first family photos without Katie—and we work hard to put smiles on our faces.
There is one shot I would normally ask for in a setting like this. But now—with Katie gone? Don’t put it off. Don’t avoid. Lean into the pain.
“How about a sister shot?” I ask. “Andrea, Bethany, Tember—let’s get a shot of the three of you girls.”
Andrea gets what I am trying to do. “Okay, Mom,” she says and steps next to Tember. She and Bethany wrap arms around our youngest daughter, and the three remaining Vaudrey sisters smile for the camera. Click.
And no matter how Scott aims the camera, Henry and Alice manage to position themselves in the background, in full swing.
We shout in unison, “Henry! No climbing!”
In the crowded Carl Sandburg gymnasium, we find an empty row in the bleachers and fill it. We sit through speeches and songs and then the reading of names. When at last the principal calls “September Michelle Vaudrey,” we cheer her on. Our beautiful, brokenhearted fourteen-year-old walks confidently (no limp) across the stage and receives her diploma. The crowd, fully aware of her loss, erupts in applause, expressing their affection—and their sympathy, too.
After the ceremony, we swarm Tember with hugs, flowers, and “Congratulations!” We take more pictures, then head to Chevys Fresh Mex for a celebratory dinner.
Tember opens cards and gifts, including the same present we’d given Bethany and Katie at their eighth-grade graduations: a gold cross inset with tiny diamonds.
As the waiter takes our dessert orders, I glance at my watch—nine o’clock. Just three days ago at this time, Dr. Yun was telling us Katie was brain-dead. Now here we sit, celebrating Tember in spite of all that has happened. We’ve pulled it together. It isn’t easy, but it is so the right choice.
Our desserts arrive, and one by one, we go around the table, sharing words of affirmation about our youngest, the guest of honor. Tember is loved beyond measure by all thirteen of her biggest fans—and by the one fan whose presence is sorely missed. Tember feels the love.
Katie’s art arrives from California on Wednesday in two giant, flat FedEx boxes. I bring them into the living room, alone, to open.
I have seen photos of a few of the pieces Katie created at APU, but most of them I have only heard about from her phone calls and e-mails. I lift each piece out of its box and remove its tissue wrapping. More than fifty pieces of new art! Many were mere homework assignments, but a few dozen are significant finished pieces. I am floored by the vast volume of art and the diverse media my daughter conquered during her one semester of art classes at APU.
I look in particular for one painting that Katie described over the phone this spring: an India ink watercolor wash she painted with her sumi-e Japanese brushes. She told me the piece portrays each of our kids as toddlers. Katie was rarely satisfied with a finished piece of her art, but I could tell over the phone that she was very happy with how The Siblings had turned out. At last, I come across a long, narrow piece of heavy watercolor paper—about two feet wide and four feet long, wrapped in tissue. The Siblings!
I open the delicate wrappings, and my jaw drops. There on the paper my five kids play as toddlers, frozen in time, captured through simple brushstrokes of translucent black and grey India ink. Each child’s portrait includes an object painted in opaque red ink, something representative of his or her toddler personality—playful Matt with a red ball, Bethany with her favorite stuffed bunny in red, Katie the fashion plate wobbling in a pair of my red high heels, Sam my snuggler with a red binky in his mouth, and Tember with a red lipstick in one hand and a red toothbrush in the other, reminiscent of the week when she discovered a “sink” just her height in the bathroom: she colored the inside of the toilet bowl with one of my red lipsticks and then brushed her teeth in the toilet water.
Any artist will tell you that watercolor is the most difficult of the paint mediums. Once the brush touches the paper, there is no turning back. Yet on one sheet of paper, Katie captured each of the five kids with playful, simplistic accuracy.
What could she have accomplished in another semester? Another year? A lifetime? What kind of mark might her art have made on the world?
I repack the boxes, and Sam drives them to Curt Pinley at the high school to be matted.
It is wonderful to have everyone together in the house, but it heightens the reality of everyone’s loss. One complication of losing a child is that you grieve not only for your own loss but for everyone else’s, too. I am devastated by the catastrophic pain that Tember, Sam, Bethany, Matt, and Andrea are going through. And of course I am leveled by Scott’s loss. Pain upon pain, layer upon layer.
I am also heartbroken for the loss Katie’s closest friends are experiencing—her friends from church; her roommates and friends from college; and her boyfriend, Dan, who is still out of state, fishing. His pain is yet to come. I love these kids, many of whom have spent countless hours at our home hanging out, watching movies, roasting marshmallows over a bonfire in the backyard, or eating Italian beef sandwiches around my kitchen table at lunch break—every Friday during Katie’s senior year. In losing my daughter, am I also losing my “Mrs. V” relationship with her closest friends? The tentacles of loss from one person’s death reach further than you can imagine.
On Wednesday morning, at the end of their fishing trip, Dan and his buddies canoe as planned through the wilderness waterways back to the remote outstation. His parents and brother are waiting for him at the dock. I don’t envy their task.
His mom calls me shortly thereafter. “It was awful,” she says. “He is a wreck.”
“I’m so glad he has his whole family around him,” I tell her. “We’re praying for you all.”
Half an hour later, this remarkable young man calls me. His first words reflect such a selfless, others-focused character: “Mrs. Vaudrey,” he says, his voice cracking, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
My parents flew in from Seattle around noon on Wednesday and are at a hotel nearby, waiting for the rest of my aunts and uncles to arrive from New England. Long overdue, I make my first ca
ll to my dad. It is his seventieth birthday.
Over the years, my patient father’s birthday has been regularly overshadowed by milestone events in our family: Scott graduated from college on Dad’s birthday. Scott graduated from med school on his birthday. Several of our kids graduated from high school on his birthday. The guy just can’t get a break in the birthday department. He always takes it in stride. But this year is the worst. On his seventieth birthday, we are planning his middle granddaughter’s funeral.
I dial his number.
“Hey, honey,” he says, recognizing my phone on his caller ID.
When I hear his gentle voice on the other end of the phone, a goofy idea pops into my overloaded, sleep-deprived brain. I start singing:
Crappy birthday to you,
Crappy birthday to you,
Crappy birthday, dear Daddy!
Crappy birthday to you!
He laughs at my ridiculous song. And then the floodgates of grief that separate us open wide and we cry.
“I love you, Dad.”
“I love you, babe.”
Few words are exchanged in our brief phone call. Few are needed.
Near bedtime, Scott heads out to the backyard to soak in our hot tub. “Let me grab my suit, Dad,” Matt says. “I’ll keep you company.” I head up to bed.
Matt has kept his emotions well guarded thus far. Perhaps he feels he should be the grown-up of the kids, since he is truly a grown man now—a six-foot-three-inch college graduate, a new husband, and a teacher. He has taken his role as pillar of strength for the family seriously from the very first phone call, and he has been a tremendous help every step of the way.
An hour later, Scott comes upstairs to our bedroom.
“Good hot tub?” I ask.
“Yep.” He sniffles.
“Did Matt say much?”
“Our first few minutes were silent,” he says. “We just soaked there together in the quiet. It was validating for both of us, I think. No words were necessary.” Both men are introverts, so that makes sense.
“But soon, I saw a shift in him,” Scott continues. “His wall of bravery got breached by a tidal wave of grief. I caught his silhouette in the moonlight and saw this involuntary quiver on his lower lip.” He chokes up. “Honey, he looked just like our same little boy, back when he wore that little blue baseball cap everywhere he went, with his blankie as his Batman cape and his toy dump truck tucked under his arm. He covered his face with his hands and started to cry, and through his sobs he told me, ‘There’s supposed to be five of us, Dad . . . five Vaudrey kids. We’re supposed to be five.’ It about wrecked me. I just held him and said, ‘I know, son. I know.’ And we just sat there together in the water and cried.”
Scott wipes his eyes. “Such a bizarre juxtaposition of emotions: On the one hand, I was drowning in grief for him. On the other hand, I was bursting with pride. I am so proud of him and the other kids, so grateful for how deeply they love one another, for how close we are as a family. And we can’t love each other this deeply without paying the full brunt of grief that comes hand in hand with loss.”
26
WHEN I WAKE ON THURSDAY MORNING, an illogical sense of stillness envelops me. Life has thrown its worst at our family, yet still we stand. I sense God is hovering, present, carrying us. I think of how, in the ER on Saturday, Scott caught and carried our son Sam out of the trauma room; God is carrying each of us, just like that. And today I will certainly need His strength: In a few hours, I will head to the funeral home to get Katie’s body ready for her viewing with Dan.
I still feel a sense of protectiveness over her body—the same protectiveness I have felt over each of my kids. I am Katie’s mama, and so long as her body needs help, my job is not yet done. Her body began inside mine, and I was its first home. Throughout infancy and toddlerhood, I nursed and bathed and snuggled that tiny body. In childhood, I bandaged skinned knees, pulled loose baby teeth, and cut her hair. I bore witness as that little-girl body began its transformation into womanhood. I bought Katie her first lip gloss—Bonne Bell Vanilla Swirl—which she was liberal in applying. I saw that body through pierced ears, overplucked eyebrows, green-tinted contact lenses, and a thankfully short-lived season of dreadlocks. I helped Katie slip myriad prom dresses onto her body until we found just the right one. And I was there for her senior portraits photo shoot, marveling at what a beauty our little girl had become.
This same body that I adored throughout its lifetime gave its final gifts—its lungs and kidneys and liver and pancreas, its corneas, skin, and even bones—to complete strangers, extending and saving their lives. This is my girl. I am ragingly proud of her. I don’t hesitate at the thought of caring for her body once more. One final time.
For a fleeting moment, I wonder, What will other people think of my volunteering for this funeral home task? Is it weird of me? Morbid? A sign that I am refusing to let her go? Maybe. I would understand if people think so. But I know Katie would want me to do whatever I can to lessen the shock of this viewing for Dan. And the idea of a stranger doing her hair, applying her makeup, being the last one to check her over before he arrives—that is unthinkable to me. It would be a cop-out I would always regret. Today will be no picnic, but today isn’t for me. It is for Katie.
All bravado aside, I don’t want to tackle this task alone. But neither Scott nor the kids have a desire to see Katie at a funeral home. Their goodbyes at the hospital feel complete to them.
“We’re willing to come help you,” Bethany says. But I can tell she and Tember are horrified at the idea of seeing their sister in a morgue.
“Nope, I got this,” I assure them. And I am relieved, frankly. If any of them were to come, the mama/wife part of me would reflexively focus on comforting them rather than accomplishing the task at hand.
Sandy is the perfect person to join me on such a mission as this.
The thing about Sandy is she’s beautiful and feminine and gentle. Even her voice is sweet and comforting. You might think she’d be overwhelmed by a task like this, but she has an inner strength that makes her more resilient than you might guess at first glance. If Katie were choosing a helper for me today, she absolutely would choose Sandy.
Downstairs in the kitchen, I find her at the stove, again attending to everyone else’s breakfasts. I step beside her and tell her what my morning holds. She blinks her blue eyes thoughtfully as she listens.
“Will you come? Will you help me?” I ask.
“Absolutely I will come with you,” she says without hesitation. “We will do this together. I am hugely honored that you would ask.”
Once again God is providing the strength I need through the help of a friend.
Yesterday, Bethany and Tember selected an outfit for their sister: a black turtleneck, black down vest, flowing grey skirt, and her “pirate boots”—long, suede scrunch boots with soles worn thin and a hole starting in one toe. Vintage Katie. She wore those boots everywhere. Scott drove the bag of clothes to Ahlgrim, and Karl, the funeral director, promised to have Katie dressed and ready by eleven.
Sandy and I load a paper grocery sack with makeup, jewelry, hair spray, Katie’s curling iron, and a brush. Kati Harkin adds a cute, newsboy-style cap—“to cover the shaved part of her head,” she tells me. Perfect. I place a goose-down pillow and Katie’s well-worn blue-and-white childhood quilt, which I sewed for her third birthday, into another sack. She dragged that threadbare blanket everywhere: to summer camp, sleepovers, and college—and then back again. Today, once more, it will do its job.
Tall, kindly Karl in his navy suit meets us in the front lobby and ushers us toward a set of double doors. “Katherine is here in our chapel,” he says. “She is dressed and ready, lying on the gurney at the front of the room. The viewing is at two o’clock. The room is yours for as long as you need it until then.” He nods and leaves us alone.
Just like in the hospital, my daughter and I are separated by a set of double doors, but this time I can go to her. I had envi
sioned Sandy and me walking in together, but now I realize I need to see Katie alone first.
“Can you wait here for just a bit?” I ask Sandy. “I want a minute by myself.”
“Absolutely. Take as long as you want,” she says, taking the bag of supplies from my arms and sitting down in one of the straight chairs against the wall.
I swallow, push open a door, and step inside.
The room is long and narrow, and I enter from the back. I hesitate to look toward the front of the room, but here we go. My head turns, and I see the gurney. A body lies motionless on top.
Is that Katie? It can’t be. It looks nothing like her. My feet rush up the aisle, my arms reach for her, and a reflexive wail escapes my throat, echoing off the walls.
There must be some mistake. This waxen figure before me cannot, cannot be my daughter. This body is wearing Katie’s clothes, but it bears no physical resemblance whatsoever to the electric, full-of-life girl who only five days ago raced out the door for work. The face is too white, the neck too thick, the features too swollen.
Then I see the hands. Folded gently and naturally across her abdomen, they are graceful, beautiful, and delicate, the kind of hands that would look natural holding a watercolor paintbrush. They are artist hands. And the nails are painted unmistakably in OPI nail polish—Lincoln Park After Dark.
Katie.
My mouth fills with a metallic taste and saliva. I gag. With trembling fingertips I touch Katie’s ashen face. I trace the faint smattering of freckles traipsing across the bridge of her nose—freckles long ago masked by her love of the sun. I haven’t seen them in years. I’d forgotten she even had them.
Colors of Goodbye Page 14