The man in the towing office helped me sign over the title and took my check. Then he handed me a screwdriver and pointed to the yard.
“Remove the license plate before you go,” he said.
I spotted Katie’s gold Taurus immediately amid the sea of crashed cars, and a wave of nausea hit me. The other car in her wreck, a Mercedes, had impaled her front passenger door, leaving an indentation so deep that the nose of the Mercedes would fit perfectly into the side of Katie’s car like a giant 3-D puzzle piece. The outside of Katie’s passenger door was now just twelve inches from her driver’s seat. I shuddered, thinking again of how easily Tember might have bummed a ride with Katie that day and been sitting in that seat when the crash occurred.
The back of the car was also caved in, crushed like a tin can. Even the backseat was squashed. Broken glass was everywhere. But amazingly, the driver’s door was untouched. It popped open with little more than a tug. The front driver’s seat where Katie had been sitting was perfectly intact. It looked as if God had cupped two giant hands around her, creating a little bubble of safety that had protected her body during the crash.
If it hadn’t been for this den of protection, Katie would have never made it to the hospital. The paramedics would have taken her straight to the morgue, and this story would have ended much differently for the people who received her organs.
I looked for any belongings on the floor and around the seats. The cops, however, had done a good job of clearing things out. I tried to lift the lid to the center console, where Katie would often set a piece of jewelry or other odds and ends, but the console was now crushed, pinned beneath the mangled passenger’s seat. What connections to my daughter did it hide?
The guy in the towing office loaned me more tools—a box cutter, a hammer, and a crowbar. With the box cutter I was able to slice away the seat cushion, but beneath the velour fabric and padding lay a quarter-inch-thick slab of raw metal from the passenger’s door that had wrapped over the edge of the console’s lid. Despite another twenty minutes of effort—and dozens of miniscule, pinprick cuts on my hands and arms from brushing against the shattered cubes of glass—the hammer and crowbar did nothing to move that metal. Short of a blowtorch, this lid was not going to open. The Taurus would be taken to a metal-recycling plant and crushed by a giant crane. Whatever treasures were entombed inside the console would be destroyed along with it.
I moved to the trunk. Maybe something inside would make up for the uncrackable safe that was the console. The trunk lid was smashed, but there was a gap on both sides almost wide enough for my arm. I wedged the crowbar under it and widened the first gap just enough to slide my arm through. I felt around and pulled out a few pens, a spiral notebook, a hairbrush. No jewelry, nothing of significance. I tried on the other side of the trunk, to the same effect. I had hoped to find something—anything—that would further connect me to my child. Every memento now had the potential to expand my memory bank and remind me of a story I might have forgotten. No new stories here. I pulled my arm out and swallowed hard.
I removed the license plates with the screwdriver as instructed, then headed to the office to return the tools, weaving my way among the rows of smashed vehicles. I wondered about each car. I had been to wrecking yards before, but I had only ever thought of them as salvage opportunities—places where you went to find a replacement knob for your dashboard or the engine part that was too overpriced to buy new.
But then it hit me: These cars were more than just metal. Many had been temporary tombs, places a daughter or father or friend had exited this world. I wanted to bow my head in reverence for each one, to hear each story, to pay tribute to someone’s tragedy besides my own.
I handed the towing office guy his tools and thanked him.
“Find what you were looking for?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “Not today.”
I climbed into my minivan and started the engine. Before I pulled onto the road, my eyes lingered on Katie’s Taurus. I thought about the energetic girl who had driven that car all around town, meeting friends, driving to work, sitting in the driveway long past midnight engrossed in meaningful conversation with a friend. She’d loved that car. She was so proud of the fact that she had paid for half of it with her own money. The last time I had seen her alive, she was driving off to work in that Taurus, full of life, her foot a little heavy on the pedal, with places to go and people to see. Now there it sat, crushed and abandoned, simply another smashed car in a wrecking yard, its broken glass glistening in the summer sun.
Tember approached us nervously one morning at breakfast. “Can I move into Katie’s room?” she asked.
Many times over the past week, I’d found Tember just lying on her sister’s bed, tears rolling down her cheeks onto Katie’s pillow. I, too, had savored time in that bedroom, just touching my middle daughter’s belongings, looking at all the physical details of the life she’d left so unfinished inside those four walls.
“I just feel close to her when I am in there,” Tember explained. “She loved her room, and I just sort of want that to be my place now, like it was for her. Plus . . .”
“Plus what, beautiful?” Scott asked.
“Well, every time I walk by her room, her absence just seems so glaring, like it’s screaming at me. I know you guys must feel it too.”
I nodded.
“She should be in there!” Tember said, pointing in the direction of Katie’s room. “And she’s not. And she won’t ever be. I don’t want her room to become something we hate walking past. I want it to be a happy place, full of life. I want to sleep in her bed at night and have sleepovers with my girlfriends on weekends, just like she did. I want her room to be lived in and loved—the way she lived in it and loved it.”
How could we argue with that? Absolutely she should have Katie’s room. But giving Tember that space as her bedroom would mean losing the sanctuary I had been finding there for myself.
I didn’t want us to leave Katie’s room untouched—mostly out of my fear that if we left it as is, I would have a propensity to turn it into a shrine. I’d had fleeting thoughts about transforming it into an art room for my own projects but hadn’t made any concrete plans. The timing of Tember’s request caught me off guard. I wasn’t ready.
She waited uneasily for a response.
“Sure,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.
“If you want to leave it alone, I totally understand,” she said, beginning to backtrack. “Or if it’s too soon . . .”
“We’ll think about it,” Scott said. “We like your idea, but we need to discuss it first.”
Later, the two of us talked.
“I am all for anything that would be helpful to one of our heartbroken kids,” I said. “And her reasons are good.”
“I agree,” he said, “but the kids aren’t the only ones who are heartbroken. You spend quite a bit of time in that room yourself. Are you ready for a move like this?”
“No,” I said. “But I never will be, and it’s the right thing to do, I think. So we might as well do it.”
“If you’re sure, then fine,” Scott said. “If you change your mind, though—if it’s too hard or too soon—it can wait. Tember will understand. No shame in that. And there’s no rush.”
I wanted to do what was best for my daughter. That’s what we moms are here for, right?
Tember and I decided to tackle Katie’s room the next day. Bethany was still in town, and we called Kati Harkin to join us for yet another death chore.
We went through Katie’s closet first, bequeathing to Bethany, Tember, Andrea (who had already flown back to California), and Kati whatever clothes or shoes fit. We did the same with her jewelry, and I kept a lot of pieces for myself—including a sterling ring and a pewter pendant, both of which she had cast by hand in her 3-D art class at Fremd.
The simple act of going through Katie’s clothes should have been tremendously difficult, but perhaps because we expected it to be hard and had emotiona
lly geared ourselves up for it, we were all pleasantly surprised when it actually turned out to be not that bad. Bethany brought her levity to the game, which helped. At five feet ten, Bethany was too long legged for most of Katie’s pants and skirts. And let’s face it—Katie’s taste in clothes was a little quirky. Bethany came across one pair of long, wide-legged palazzo pants that were about a foot too short for Bethany’s thirty-seven-inch inseams. She slipped them on over her shorts.
“Look at me! I’m a stilt man!” she said. We all looked—and laughed. Her thin legs protruded from the bottom of Katie’s pants like stilts. She began humming a circus song and doing a dorky dance around the room, her arms flailing and knees prancing high. How I love this girl and her wacky humor!
With laughter and warmth, we finished our chore. I found solace in slipping into one of Katie’s cardigan sweaters—it was as if she were wrapping her arms around me. It still held a faint smell of her perfume.
After everyone had taken the items they wanted, I wasn’t sure what to do with the leftovers. I couldn’t bear to give anything of hers to Goodwill. Maybe I would make a quilt for each of the kids someday. So I loaded everything into bags and stored them on a shelf in our basement.
I tackled the rest of the room by myself the next morning. Bookshelves, desk drawers crammed with art supplies, and closet shelves piled high with childhood treasures—each item warranted a decision. Despite my best intentions, it proved too much. Tember found me an hour later, sitting on the floor of Katie’s room in a puddle of tears.
“I just can’t do it—not yet,” I confessed.
She put her arms around me and hugged me. “It’s all right, Mom. There is no hurry. And I don’t ever need to move in here if it’s too hard. Do whatever you think is best. No pressure. No pressure at all.”
I sat there and thought. “Tem, I really think you should have this room. I want you in here. It’s just a little harder than I thought. Give me until after the weekend.”
“Take as long as you want.”
“Just the weekend.”
I took the weekend. And on Monday, I tried again. This time, I finished organizing and storing Katie’s belongings. And when the room was empty and ready, I was genuinely happy to help Tember make the move. Katie would have loved seeing her kid sister snuggling into her old bed, where they had shared countless sister sleepovers on so many nights.
There was another sorting project that proved too difficult the first time around. A friend had gathered all of Katie’s art supplies from her studio space at APU and shipped them to our home. When I pulled her artist’s toolbox from the cardboard FedEx package, my throat tightened. But I was hell-bent on not avoiding the task in front of me. I wanted to say yes to the pain rather than pull back from it—not out of bravado or masochism, but because of my growing conviction that “through” was the quickest way out and because I feared that avoiding the difficult tasks would later leave me stuck in my grief.
So I opened the toolbox. The memorable smell of her oil paint and turpentine wafted into the air. I looked through her brushes, picking up a few of her favorites and stroking their soft bristles against my cheek. Then I spotted that favorite paint-stained apron of hers—a green Starbucks apron from her high school barista job. I held it up. It bore splatters of new, unfamiliar paint from the pieces she had completed at college this spring. One of the new splatters showed a partial fingerprint . . .
Too much. I bundled the apron, stuffed it inside, shut the lid, and stored the toolbox on a shelf in the basement, next to the bags of her clothes.
A friend paid a professional housecleaner to come over and give the whole house a good deep clean—which was a tremendous relief, as it was long overdue but I had zero energy. The woman did an excellent job. And the next morning, I discovered she had washed the girls’ bathroom mirror. Katie’s message, “72 days,” was gone.
I wanted to throw up.
But then again, what was I to have done—never wash that bathroom mirror again? I’d give anything to have a photo of that mirror before the number was washed away. But we don’t always get what we want.
Sympathy cards from friends and loved ones continued to trickle in with the daily mail, and they lifted my spirits immensely.
A delightful twist: Many people tucked restaurant gift cards into their envelopes. Evidently Scott’s administrative assistant at work had suggested this idea to people who asked her how they could help. One family gave us free pizza for a year from the restaurant chain they owned, Lou Malnati’s.
These gift cards proved invaluable in the weeks and months to come. On nights when the idea of cooking felt insurmountable, we could drive to Panera Bread or Portillo’s or Macaroni Grill for dinner. And on nights when even leaving the house was too overwhelming, we could order the best deep-dish pizza in Chicago. These generous gifts helped us discover we could still laugh and tell stories around a table and make new family memories—memories without our middle daughter.
33
TWO WEEKS AFTER THE FUNERAL, our friends in Spokane hosted a memorial service for Katie at our old church. They flew us out and we stayed with Sandy McConkey and her family. Her husband, Bobby, gave a beautiful eulogy; our friend Greg led worship; and we showed the DVD of the Willow Creek service.
In the receiving line afterward, we were greeted by the kids’ schoolteachers, Scott’s former ER partners and nurses, church friends, and neighbors—many of whom we hadn’t seen in more than six years. Katie’s fifth- and sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Rae, was so shaken when he greeted me that he couldn’t speak. We simply hugged, and he wept on my shoulder. It moved me deeply. Katie’s third-grade teacher, Mrs. Metcalf, held me close. Her fourteen-year-old son had died the year after Katie had been her student, and I had attended her son’s funeral. Now here she was for my daughter’s.
“Will I survive?” I whispered in her ear.
“Yes,” she said. “But not for a while. You won’t feel human again for at least a year.”
Her honest answer gave me hope, actually, because from my vantage point I wondered if I’d ever feel human again.
During that trip to Washington, we savored a few days with the McConkeys, who live on the Palouse Prairie—rolling wheat fields southeast of Spokane, nestled against the western foothills of the Rockies. These were the same farmlands where Scott and I had lived when the kids were young. Katie had rescued Bethany from the yellow jackets at the house located just a few miles down the winding country road.
Before anyone else stirred on the morning after the memorial, I made coffee, poured a cup, and took a walk in the fields beside the house. The Palouse is dryland farming country, and winter wheat blanketed the rolling hills as far as my eyes could see. The air was arid and hot, and already the vibration of grasshoppers’ wings buzzed from the wheat stubble around my feet. The dawn breeze smelled like warm, unbuttered toast. I picked some wildflowers—black-eyed Susans, blue bachelor’s buttons, yarrow. In the distance, a pheasant’s staccato call broke the stillness. These sights and sounds and smells filled our kids’ childhoods, their endless summer mornings long ago. Did I treasure those days enough? I can never have them back.
I sat down among the stubble, sipping my coffee and taking in the expanse of the horizon. I replayed scenes in my mind—the children building forts in the ravine, catching garter snakes along the drive, poking the giant anthill in our pasture with sticks, eating cherry tomatoes and snow peas straight off the vine from my garden, and playing fetch in the hay field with our dogs, Lloyd the Wonder Dog and Betty. I am rich beyond measure.
The toasted summer breeze dried the tears on my cheeks. The house would be stirring soon. Flowers and empty cup in hand, I stood, stretched, and retraced my steps, ready to savor the new day.
When we got back home to Chicago, I did a mental recap of the past few weeks—and looked ahead to the weeks and months to come.
We had navigated Scott’s first Father’s Day and birthday without Katie, and it had been an inner ago
ny for him. Katie had purchased two shirts for her papa’s birthday a week or so before she died, and I had wrapped them for her and given them to him. I gave him fair warning, too, but there was no protecting his heart against opening these final gifts from this daughter who loved him so.
We had hosted Tember’s eighth-grade graduation party in our backyard, and adding to Katie’s glaring absence was the fact that she had preordered the “Congraduations!” cake—a Vaudrey tradition—from Costco. Katie had chosen the flavor, the colors, the filling. I had picked up the cake the morning of the party and gently told Tember its story. There was a “make a memory” look in Tember’s eyes as she cut into the cake her sister had planned for her big day. Then it was eaten, and then it was gone.
These milestones were excruciating, but they could not be stopped. I scanned the calendar pages, looking ahead for other such milestones still looming. I didn’t want to be blindsided. I wanted to see these “firsts” coming and to prepare.
Our summer vacation in August—a road trip to Massachusetts to attend a family reunion—was fast approaching, but we were a mess. I canceled our trip.
I flipped through September and October to November—Thanksgiving. No Katie at my side in the kitchen, cooking with her siblings and me. No Katie to filigree the piecrusts with her elegant swirls before sprinkling them with sugar and sliding them into the oven. No Katie to help decorate the Thanksgiving table or to write name cards for each of us in her distinctive font.
And then Christmas . . .
I could not stop these dates from coming. So I began thinking through each “Awful First,” planning how our family could navigate them in a healthy, authentic way, holding sorrow in one hand and life in the other. Holding on and letting go.
Colors of Goodbye Page 19