Colors of Goodbye

by September Vaudrey

  Our kids then take the stage. One by one, from youngest to oldest, they speak of the sister they loved and lost.

  “I’m September, Katie’s younger sister,” Tember begins. “Katie and I share an infinite number of little inside jokes and memories that crack us up. And I thought of one I could share with you.

  “Our family would go camping in our motor home, and we’d get to know the other families at the campgrounds. But in the back of our minds, we kids would think, ‘We’re never gonna see these people again . . .’” She smiles mischievously at the crowd, and they laugh.

  “So one day opportunity struck, and we sisters made up fake names and Southern accents. Bethany was ‘Mary Sue,’ Katie was ‘Anna Jo,’ and I was ‘Louise.’ And we walked around the campground, talking obnoxiously loud so other people would overhear us in our fake Southern accents.

  “But my accent was so bad Bethany and Katie wouldn’t let me talk in public. I begged them, ‘I can totally do the accent!’ They wouldn’t budge. So I was the mute, weird sister. They would talk and laugh in their little Southern accents, and I would just stand there, mute, kicking dirt at them. Finally, Katie turned and said in her cute Southern accent, ‘Louise! Stop kickin’!’

  “And that phrase just stuck. Today if one of us is being annoying, someone will say, ‘Louise! Stop kickin’!’ I will always remember Katie putting her hand on her hip, tellin’ me to ‘stop kickin’!’

  “Katie loved dressing up and makeup. I would always watch her getting ready for her school dances and for prom, and I’d do whatever it is that sisters do to help. Because I am the youngest, I worried no one would be around for my prom. Neither of my sisters would be living at home to help me get ready. And Katie promised she would fly home for prom, just to help me get ready.”

  A murmur of quiet groans ripples through the audience. I glance down the row at Bethany and Andrea. I see a pair of big-sister plane tickets in my future.

  “The night before her accident,” Tember continues, “I had my eighth-grade dance. When I got home from school that day, Katie was waiting to help me get ready. She had set out her earrings and a necklace that she thought would be pretty with my dress, and she put a little ribbon on her purse and lent it to me. She painted my nails and did my hair, and she found my missing stiletto. The last photograph we have of Katie is of the two of us, with me all ready for my dance.” She holds up the eight-by-ten-inch photo from Costco.

  Tember’s eyes fill and her voice cracks. “Katie is so special to me. I really miss her.” She gathers her papers and the photo and turns from the podium.

  Sam steps to the mic. “I’m Sam, Katie’s younger brother. My sister led the most laughter-filled life of anybody I know,” he says. “She also found time for seriousness and thought and even pain, but most of her days were simply spent in joy. Whether she was singing, baking, drawing, or laughing, she dispensed love over anybody near her. She used her persistence to demonstrate kindness and acceptance to just about anyone—and believe me, not many people were more persistent than Katie when it came to something she really believed in.

  “When Katie was in the eighth grade and I was in fifth, we played a game of Monopoly one Saturday morning in the basement. I don’t usually win at Monopoly, but for some reason that day, everything was going my way. I owned Park Place, Boardwalk, and six other monopolies—and Katie was $4,000 indebted to me. But she was still smiling and laughing at every roll of the dice, as if she were about to win some sort of $5,000 bonus roll. She drew her loss out for so long that eventually we got called upstairs for lunch and had to call the game a tie.

  “She just wasn’t willing to quit. She fought for things she really wanted or things she thought were right, and she demonstrated that kind of fight, over and over, throughout her life—right up to her last day when her heart restarted three times, against all medical odds.

  “Katie greeted me with a hug every day this past month when I got home from school. She woke up early to make us warm breakfasts. She painted in the sun, and played games, and sang, and watched movies, and fell on the floor laughing, and listened to good music, and journaled, and she just loved like crazy. She squeezed every drop of life out of every day. There is nobody I know with that much charisma, laughter, encouragement, and affection all in one body, and I cannot express how much I love and will miss my sister.”

  Bethany is next.

  “When my sister died,” Bethany says, “she was wearing thick white ankle socks with purple stripes.”

  Ah, the hospital footies!

  “These were the very same socks that had been ‘borrowed’ from a clothing donation bin at APU a month ago by two sisters laughing so hard they had to drop the boxes they were carrying. It ended up being one of my best memories with my kid sister, even though I didn’t realize at the time that it would be my last.

  “It was move-out day at APU. Katie had called me frantically the day before. ‘I don’t have anywhere to store my stuff for the summer! Can you keep it in your apartment?’ I agreed to put her stuff in my tiny bedroom closet but asked her to please compact it so it would be easy to move and store. She said, ‘Sure, sure . . . oh, and oops! I don’t have a ride to the airport in the morning! Help!’ Classic Katie.

  “I told her, ‘Okay, sure, I can drive you,’ and we arranged that I’d pick her up in front of Trinity Hall at ten o’clock to load her stuff into my car.

  “When I arrived at Trinity the next morning, Katie was not out front. I found her standing outside her dorm room door looking frazzled, next to about nine thousand pounds of her ‘most prized possessions.’ This, she assured me, was the compacted version of her stuff!

  “So the two of us spent the next hour trying to get everything she owned down four flights of stairs, across Trinity’s lawn, and into my Honda Civic! It was one of the most hilarious undertakings we ever shared.

  “She had this one huge, flimsy set of plastic drawers that was packed full and was unbelievably heavy. It took two of us to carry it down the stairs, and its sharp edges started digging into our fingers as we walked. We must have been a sight, these two girls carrying this heavy box, shouting, ‘Ow! Ow! Ow!’

  “By the time we finally got to the front door of Trinity, our hands were killing us, and we spotted this donation box full of clothes. Katie got an idea, and her face lit up. ‘We can take donation socks and put ’em on our hands!’ So there we were, laughing like idiots, pulling someone else’s used socks onto our hands, then waddling across Trinity lawn with this heavy box, yelling, ‘Ow! Ow! Ow!’

  “I don’t know anyone else but my sister who could have turned the task of moving heavy boxes into a hilarious memory like that.

  “I brought those stolen charity socks with me from Azusa to Chicago this week, and Katie wore them—on her feet this time—as she went into her organ donation surgery. I share this story with you because it illustrates the two things I love most about Katie: She brought life to everyone she met, and she was one of the most hilarious people I ever had the privilege of knowing. She had the unique ability to make absolutely anything into something fun. She was hysterically funny and intensely creative. Her laugh was contagious, and I am going to miss hearing it all across the parking lot at APU, at the Starbucks where I work—I could hear her coming from a mile away—and at home in Chicago. I am only beginning to understand the deep sorrow of losing my sister, but I feel so privileged to have known her from her birth to her death.”

  Matt steps to the podium with Andrea at his side. “I’m Matt, Katie’s older brother,” he says, “and this is my wife, Andrea, Katie’s newest sister.

  “Our dad always encouraged my sister to be as ‘Katie’ as possible, but she didn’t really need any coaxing to be fully Katie all the time. She had no setting between ‘sleep’ and ‘Katie.’ Growing up, on Christmas morning she would wake up before dawn and come jump on my bed, screaming, ‘How can you be sleeping? It’s Christmas!’ . . . And that happened again this year!”

 
; The auditorium erupts in laughter and then quiets as Matt continues. “I have a head full of memories and conversations and pictures, all of which form the Katie we knew as an adult. This Katie showed little restraint toward laughter or beauty or art or hugs or—especially—intentional conversation. Katie was relentless in her pursuits of beauty and of people.

  “While I accept the dreadful truth that Katie is not coming back, I am faced with a decision of how I am going to honor and remember her. My sister accomplished much in her short nineteen years, but life is too short to accomplish all the desires of the heart. Perhaps the best tribute to Katie would be to live as she learned to live: by treating each relationship with relentless interest, to treat each conversation as if it matters for eternity.

  “If my sister’s life were a lesson, the charge might have been this: Speak kind words to people who are still present to hear them. Take a friend out to coffee and listen to them. Spend your lunch break with a coworker. Leave a note on a roommate’s desk. Call your parents to check in. Make relationships your relentless pursuit.

  “Katie posted this Vincent van Gogh quote on her Facebook page, and it summarizes her life as much as one phrase can: ‘There is nothing more artistic than to love people.’

  “Katie, rest in peace. To the rest of us, live in purpose.”

  As our kids step off the stage, I have never felt more proud as a mama. They have painted such a vivid portrait of our family and of Katie’s role in it, her character and personality, the love they share for one another, and the fun that erupts whenever they are together. This is our family.

  And not one story was a repeat.

  I speak next: “I’m September, Katie’s mama. Katie and I shared the same heart for family and motherhood. I love that she someday wanted to do what I have so loved doing: being a wife to an amazing man and raising a big family. She told me again last week, ‘I am so glad we have a big family. I love each of my siblings so much.’

  “For all her gracefulness, Katie was comically clumsy. Falling down the stairs became so commonplace for her that when we’d hear a series of thumps and bumps, followed by a quick, ‘I’m okay!’ we wouldn’t even look up. It would startle dinner guests, but we’d explain, ‘That’s only Katie, falling down the stairs.’ What a paradox that someone so clumsy was also so graceful and artistic.”

  I spoke of those hours at the hospital: “We begged God for a miracle that night. He gave us three. Katie’s body was revived three different times for a total ‘downtime’ of more than forty-five minutes.

  “Her brain was in grave condition. I begged God, ‘Please, please, make her mind whole.’ And He did. It wasn’t in the way we wanted, but Katie is now living in eternity, fully whole.

  “God did three miracles that night, and we desperately wanted those miracles to be for our family. But those miracles were for the families of the people who received her organs, and we celebrate with them.

  “In the moment that the neurosurgeon told us Katie was brain-dead, a mental picture—some kind of a vision?—flooded my mind: Katie’s car, barreling down Route 68 under the canopy of ancient oaks, her lifeless body slumped over the wheel, unconscious. And right before impact, God just swoops down and scoops her up into His arms. And together they soar through the trees. He just scooped her up. I don’t blame Him. I’d have scooped her up too.

  “God tells us in His Word that our days are numbered, and I have been struck by the intentionality with which Katie lived each day. Her first priority was her relationship with God. After that came people. She poured herself into her relationships. I want to do a better job of living my days with such focus.

  “For Katie, painting was a form of worship, and her art couldn’t be contained. She filled closet walls, the insides of cupboard doors, and the backs of dressers with her art. The bigger the canvas, the better. Last summer, Katie built a giant stretched canvas—four feet by four feet—to paint her largest acrylic piece to date. The canvas was much too big for her easel, so she found the perfect place to set up shop and paint: in our rec room, where only the week before we had installed brand-new carpeting. Sure enough, her rinse water spilled. I guess you could say we got two paintings from our daughter that day. Well, Katie, at last you have a canvas big enough, and if you spill, you won’t ruin the carpet!

  “In the days and years to come, when a beautiful sky catches my eye, I will think of the girl who loved beauty and loved people. And I will be washed anew with the unending goodness of God, the Inventor of beauty, the Creator of people, the One whom Katie loved most of all.”

  Scott closes out the eulogies with a powerful tribute to his Katiebug, and he shares a part of his journey that he hasn’t yet shared with me.

  “From the time we got the first phone call,” he says, “I’ve felt this tight band around my chest—a sense that there was something for me to do as a dad. And sometimes it got so bad it felt like I couldn’t get air. But on Thursday, I got this image I sensed was from God. Jesus was holding Katie, reminding her of her legacy—how she had loved people, fought for people who were voiceless, and cared for and nurtured so many; how she had created dozens of pieces of art, each with a specific spiritual purpose; how she had loved her siblings well. And then Jesus looked in her eyes and said, ‘Well done.’

  “And in that moment, I realized Katie no longer needed her earthly daddy, that I had been released from my role of protecting her and advocating for her and guiding her. And knowing where her guidance and nurture were now coming from, I could let her go. And at that point, my breathing came easier. I exhaled and I relaxed.

  “If she could hear me today,” he concludes, his voice quivering ever so slightly, “I would tell her that I love her so much. I will miss her every day. And I have no doubt she has heard, ‘Well done.’”

  As Brandon and our musician friends take the stage to lead everyone in singing the songs Bethany selected, I catch a glimpse of my kids, sitting down the row from me. Tears stream over Sam’s reddened cheeks, and beyond him, Andrea holds tightly to Matt’s arm. Bethany’s and Tember’s faces lift upward—tears escaping through dark, wet lashes—and all of the kids join Brandon and this amazing roomful of people in singing together, “Lord, You never let go of me.”

  Bill closes out the service with a message rooted in Hebrews 6:19—“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” He describes how, for first-century mariners facing a storm, an anchor “firm and secure” meant the difference between life and death—and how our family has faced a force-ten gale these past seven days.

  “It’s only human to wonder if the Vaudreys’ anchor is really holding,” he says. “Those of us who have walked closely with them this week, we know up close and personally that they have an anchor that is more than adequate, even for this storm.”

  He is right. My anchor is holding—for now. But in a month? A year? Will my anchor hold when this numbness and shock wear off? When I am facing the rest of my life without Katie?

  “Katie lived in vital relationship with God until her final breath,” Bill continues. “She may well have passed into His presence with His name on her lips. He was not ancillary to her life. He was central; He was fundamental; He was true north. And He brought to her experience what Jesus promised in John 10:10—and what you heard so often relayed from family members on this stage—life in all its fullness.

  “Katie’s confidence in the person and work of Jesus Christ was unshakable. She actually believed that everyone she knew would be better off if they would live their lives with God at the center. And if some here today are looking for a way to honor Katie’s short life, one appropriate way would be to explore the God who meant so much to her. She would be delighted. Maybe Katie’s life would inspire you to taste, to see, and to experience the goodness and grace of our great God.”

  Bill says some kind words about our family and then adds a final thought. “Katie’s death was not the end of her. Her current absence is not the final reality. You’re going
to be reunited with her someday, and every chair around the Vaudrey dinner table will be filled again. The Scripture says that on the other side, there will be no more tears, and no more sorrow, no more separation, and no more funerals.

  “And I know you’ll hang on to that hope between this day and that day, because you ‘have this hope as an anchor’ for your souls.”

  30

  AS JON CLOSES THE SERVICE IN PRAYER, we follow Chris, Bill, and Lynne out of the auditorium and into a private room off the main lobby. As the doors close behind us, Scott stops in his tracks, covers his face with his hands, and breaks down in deep, guttural sobs. We gather around him—the sequoia of our family, the one who has stood so tall for each of us this past week and throughout our lives. Released at last to express the full depth of his own sorrow, he weeps. Sam wraps his arm around his dad and holds him—a poignant role reversal of the ER trauma room scene just a week prior.

  “I hate it,” Scott finally says, wiping his eyes and looking up. “I just hate that she is gone.”

  We’ve done it. We have crossed the finish line and made it through the funeral. A rolling surge of lightness sweeps through the room. We begin to chatter with relief.

  “You kids were incredible,” Scott says. Tember and Sam get high-fives from their older sibs.

  “And you all had original material!” I say, winking at Bethany. “No repeats!”

  “There was something powerful happening in that room,” Bill says. “In my forty years of being a pastor, I’ve spoken at a lot of funerals, but I’ve never experienced anything quite like this. And your kids are amazing speakers, every last one of them!”

  “Your message, Bill, was just what Katie would have wanted,” Scott says. “‘An anchor for the soul . . .’”