On the morning of May 31—two years after Katie’s accident—my dad called. We chatted about his vegetable garden and mine, and about his latest salmon-fishing trips in Puget Sound. My dad has a wide assortment of fishing buddies—some guys he’s been fishing with since I was a kid and some younger guys just starting out. I always enjoy hearing about his adventures.
After a few minutes, Dad grew quiet. “September, I want to tell you about a new fishing buddy of mine,” he said. “His name is Dave, and he went with us on a trip up north of Vancouver. After the first day of fishing, he struck up a conversation with me privately at the back of the boat and told me he was sorry to hear about my granddaughter—he’d heard about Katie’s death. Then he told me he, too, had lost a child—his six-year-old son had died of cancer. We talked about his son and Katie for quite a while, and he cried, and it was so nice to talk with someone who understands.”
It’s harder for my dad’s generation to discuss matters of the heart, and I was happy he had found a friend with whom he could talk.
“We went out again a couple of weeks ago,” my dad continued, “and again Dave made it a point to pull me aside and talk about Katie and his little boy. Whenever he talks about his son, he gets a far-off look on his face, and his eyes well up. You can tell his loss is still very raw, very painful.”
My dad paused. When he spoke again, his voice cracked. “Honey, Dave is eighty years old. His son died in 1965, when you were two.”
I was speechless. I had envisioned Dave as a guy in his thirties. His boy had died nearly fifty years ago, but to this father, it was like yesterday.
My dad cleared his throat. “I know today is a hard day, hon. I hope it’s okay that I told you Dave’s story. I thought it might be helpful for you and Scott in the long run.”
“Absolutely, Dad,” I said. “It’s super helpful. And Dave’s experience affirms what Scott and I have been suspecting. We will still be crying in forty years, I have no doubt. You just don’t get over something like this. At best, you learn to live within it. You embrace the life you still have. While I am hoping I will feel a little better a year from now—or five—I am also convinced that when I’m Dave’s age, I will still be heartbroken.”
“I love you, babe.”
“I love you, too, Daddy.”
Later that day Tember offered to make a Costco run with me to restock the ever-depleting fridge. When we returned home a couple of hours later, the house was spotlessly clean. Bethany and Andrea had commandeered the kitchen, and wonderful aromas wafted from the oven. Sam had vacuumed and was setting the table for dinner. Matt stood at the sink, trimming fresh halibut, tuna, and salmon steaks for the grill. Scott had filled an ice chest with beer and Mike’s Hard Lemonade for the twenty-one-and-older crowd, and sodas for Sam, eighteen, and Tember, sixteen. He now sat in the Bug Room, programming a playlist of summer tunes into his iPod.
“Wow!” I said. “You guys sure have been industrious! Thanks!” Even for my normally helpful family, this seemed above and beyond.
I should have suspected something was up.
Thirty minutes later, the doorbell rang. Everyone seemed absorbed in their tasks, so I went to open it. Through the sidelight window, I spotted an RV parked on the road and a woman standing on our front porch with a laundry basket. What?
When I opened the door, there stood my dear auntie Brenda and uncle Vic—all the way from Massachusetts!
“Hello, miss,” Brenda said, a gleam in her eye. “We’re just camping in your neighborhood, and we have some laundry to do. Can we borrow your washer and dryer?”
Behind them stood Scott, filming the whole surprise, which, as it turns out, was only a surprise to me.
“What? What? What!” I couldn’t believe my eyes, and my brain could not connect the dots. Leaving my aunt and uncle standing on the front porch, I ran back inside the house, raced halfway up the stairs, then ran back down again before throwing my arms around Brenda’s neck, hugging and crying and laughing.
Brenda and Vic are two of the dearest people to our family. Though they live one thousand miles away in New England, they have never let the distance keep them from being a vital part of our lives. They were at our wedding twenty-six years before, at Matt and Andrea’s wedding three years ago, and at Katie’s memorial two years ago. Now here they stood on my front porch, grinning at the tremendous joke: a surprise visit to help us pass the two-year mark.
“Gotcha,” said Uncle Vic, proud as punch.
Everyone piled into the kitchen, and the story began to unroll. Brenda and Vic were taking their fifth-wheel camper on a cross-country road trip, and they had timed their itinerary so they could be here on our doorstep on May 31. Tember’s trip to Costco had been part of the ploy to get me out of the house. The rapid housecleaning and amazing dinner prep had all been timed for Brenda and Vic’s arrival, which added an air of jubilation to this milestone day.
Once again, God had dreamed up a wildly creative way to help trump our pain. Last year it had been a baby raccoon—now grown and gone. This year it was Brenda and Vic, whose warmth and laughter enriched our lives once again.
God is good.
Two nights later—the two-year mark of Katie’s donation surgery (and leave it to Katie to have her “two-year mark” span three days!)—I was feeling restless when I climbed into bed. I really wanted to mark the exact moment of my daughter’s final heartbeat—2:18 a.m. I considered setting my alarm but decided against it because it would wake Scott. It’s silly anyway. There was nothing magical about that exact moment. I closed my eyes and eventually fell asleep.
Some time later, a solitary, deafening thunderclap jolted me awake. A summer storm had rolled in, and lightning illuminated our bedroom. Scott’s steady breathing told me he had slept through the thunder. I rolled over and looked at my digital alarm clock—2:18 a.m.
Of course! In His good nature, God had given me a tiny gift: He had awakened me with precisely timed thunder so I could honor this moment in memory of my daughter.
I peered into the darkness as my mind’s eyes strained to peek into heaven and envision Katie there. What was she doing at this exact moment?
I miss you, Katie. I miss you. I love you, my sweet girl. You are not forgotten. You are never far from my heart.
God had given me a wake-up call I hadn’t even prayed for. I don’t understand why the bigger things I’ve prayed for—Katie’s very life, for example—were not given. It will never make sense to me, but I rest in knowing that my human pea brain cannot see the full landscape of eternity as He does.
I straightened my pillow, closed my eyes, and accepted the small blessing He had sent my way.
The overnight storm lingered the next morning, the air thick and humid. I awoke at dawn, dressed, and opened the slider to the back deck. Solitary raindrops plunked to the ground, flicking individual blades of grass. In the distance, thunder rolled like an afterthought, nearly spent. Year two was officially behind us. It was the dawn of year three.
I inhaled the earthy scent of the rain-soaked morning, recalling how I had wandered the yard at dawn a year ago—and the year before that—sensing but resisting God’s invitation of surrender. Again, now, I felt His pull—but not toward a surrender where two opponents have battled and someone has finally won. Rather, He was drawing me toward the surrender of a brokenhearted child who finally stops trying to be brave in the face of adversity, lifts up her hands, and runs for comfort into her parent’s outstretched arms.
At some point, I needed to let go of my daughter. I needed to say—and accept—“This is my life.” The stronger play in that moment—the right move—would be to meet God out there in my backyard, storm and all, and have it out with Him, to settle this standoff, to wrestle it to the ground.
But I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t that strong. I wasn’t ready for such surrender.
Surely not now—it’s raining, I rationalized. Only a fool would be caught strolling in her yard in this kind of weather. Maybe later, i
f the weather breaks . . .
I stepped back inside, closed the sliding glass door, and turned to make the coffee.
Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.
ATTRIBUTED TO RUMI
Stop complaining, stop comparing. Pack lightly.
KATIE VAUDREY, 19, FINAL JOURNAL ENTRY
46
SAM PLANNED TO START AS A FRESHMAN at Azusa Pacific that fall, just as Katie had—and Bethany and Matt before her.
“I want to be near my siblings,” he had said when it came time to pick a school the previous October. “Plus Matt and Andrea will probably start a family soon, and the baby will need Uncle Sam.”
The summer between high school and college had always brought a mixture of joy and sadness for me as a parent—joy for the future each child was stepping into and sadness because I knew how much I would miss him or her. But this summer felt different. It was more unsettling. Why?
One afternoon as Sam played the piano in the living room, I stood in the doorway soaking in the music, and it hit me: Katie graduated from Fremd. Katie went off to APU. And sometimes when you send a child off for their first year of college, it is also their last year of life. Sometimes they leave the nest and they don’t come back.
My psyche had memorized a pattern of one. These last days at home with Sam felt just like Katie’s last days before college. He had graduated from Fremd. He was heading to APU. I had printed Sam the exact same “College Shopping List” that I’d created for Katie, replacing her “decorative wall hanging, cutie throw pillow, teacups, and plates” with “longboard, guitar, electric razor” for her brother. I had taken him to the doctor for the same freshman immunizations, purchased the same plane ticket (probably on the same airline), and witnessed the same closing landmarks of his childhood—the last high school summer camp, the last family getaway, the final packing up of his childhood bedroom. I was repeating the pattern. Would this child’s death be part of the pattern too?
I was ashamed to acknowledge these morbid thoughts, but they made sense to me. I no longer assumed bad things wouldn’t happen to us. They did. They do. Could they happen twice? To the same family? Absolutely they could.
The odds were astronomically in my favor that Sam would finish his freshman year, complete all four years of college, and live a long and fruitful life. But my irrationality would not be so easily soothed. As I stood there listening to Sam play the piano that day—and every day until I said goodbye to him in California three weeks later—I heard fear’s tiny, cruel whisper: Are these his last days? Are you savoring them fully? Are you making every moment count? And then, Will he be taken from you too? My fears were irrational, I knew, but I couldn’t stop the thoughts from coming.
Sam and I flew to California over Labor Day weekend, where he began life as a college freshman. Everywhere we went, feelings of déjà vu kept surfacing from just three years ago, when I’d helped Katie move into college. But the fresh memories Sam and I made on that campus mingled with the old—not just of Katie, but of Matt and Bethany as freshmen as well. And on Sunday afternoon when I said goodbye to Sam, I was glad I’d managed to keep my crazy fears to myself. (“Until you got to the airport!” Scott is quick to remind me. Evidently I was a bit of a blubbering mess when I called my husband from the gate, but Sam was none the wiser.)
As my plane took off for Chicago, I looked out my window. Below I could see the giant “A” for Azusa painted onto the mountainside just above the campus. Somewhere down there was an eighteen-year-old young man whom I loved beyond all measure. With one hand, I held a lifetime of memories with him—and with the other, I let him go.
Once fall was in full swing, I planned another visit to the crash site. Lynne came along, and we stopped at Jewel-Osco to pick up flowers.
“This is the one,” I said, lifting a robust bouquet of miniature sunflowers, blue statice, sage-green thistle, and some waxy burgundy berries I’d never seen before. Rich autumn textures and colors.
“My treat,” Lynne said, taking the flowers from my hand and heading to the checkout.
As we made the short drive to the site, I filled Lynne in on a recent conversation I’d had with Katie’s old boyfriend, Dan, who was now a senior at APU and doing well. Over the past few years he had called or stopped by occasionally to talk about his loss. I gently encouraged him to be open to dating again.
He had called me a few weeks ago to tell me he’d met a girl. “She is joyful and compassionate, and she loves God and loves people,” he said. “She stands up for the underdog, just like Katie always did. I think I might want to date her. And I . . . wanted to know what you think.”
I suspected his phone call was his way of giving me a heads up that he was ready at last to move on. I sensed it was a goodbye.
“Ask her out!” I told him. And he did.
Navigating where Dan fit into my post-Katie life had been a challenge. I truly wanted him to move on and find the happiness he so deserved—and would need to find apart from my daughter. But letting him go meant grieving one more lost connection to Katie.
Lynne listened as I recounted my conversation with Dan, then probed in her quiet, gentle way. “How were you feeling inside?”
My throat grew tight. “I was quaking,” I said. “I was genuinely happy for him, really.”
“But . . .”
“But . . . it is another turning of the page.” I wiped my nose on the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “A new chapter in his life is beginning—and without my daughter.”
“You’re right, it is another turning of the page,” she said. “How can this not be hard for you?”
“But I have been too slow to accept that his place in our family would inevitably fade. I’ve clung to these rainbows-and-unicorns hopes that maybe someday he and his future wife would stop by and introduce me to their first baby—as if I were a spare grandma. But how silly that now seems.”
“Perhaps your hopes have not been . . . realistic,” Lynne said tactfully.
I laughed with affection at her gentle critique. “Perhaps,” I said. “Another ‘letting go.’ I am happy for him, truly, and a bit envious: Though he cannot replace Katie as a person, he can replace the role she played in his life. He can find someone he loves just as much, or even more. I, however, cannot find another middle daughter.”
At the crash site, Lynne and I discovered that the area had changed even more since my last visit. The entire property was now a huge, earth-torn construction site. The rental house near where she had crashed had been demolished. Even the driveway that marked the spot was gone.
We parked down the road in the lot of a little church and walked to the site. The iron cross was nowhere to be seen. We began toeing around in the overgrown grasses, looking for it.
“Whenever I’m here, I never quite know what I should do,” I confessed as we searched. “I like having a ‘place,’ but it’s always a little awkward, sitting here by the side of the road. And now everything has changed. Even the cross is gone. There’s nothing left.”
“Maybe it’s right that the cross is gone,” Lynne said. “Maybe this, too, is another turning of the page.”
With no marker to lay her flowers beneath, Lynne walked over to an oak tree at the edge of the field, now under excavation. A weathered vine wrapped around its trunk, and she tucked her flowers between the tree and the vine—perfect. My sweet friend has such an artistic eye for flowers. Katie would have loved the dramatic contrast between the rugged bark and the vivid colors of the bouquet. And she would have liked that the flowers were elevated and thus visible from the road. I took a photo of Lynne next to the tree, and then we walked back to the van.
“Is there someplace nearby where we can get a cup of coffee?” she asked.
“I know just the place!”
Moments later, we pulled up to Bandito Barney’s, the restaurant where Katie would have worked the summer she died. I had wanted to pay this place a visit ever since.
Housed in a refurbished Victorian hom
e and painted a brilliant purple with lime-green trim, I could see right away that the vintage yet whimsical feel of the restaurant would have appealed to my artsy daughter. Inside, worn oak floorboards creaked underfoot, and a crackling fire in a massive yellow-brick fireplace cast flickering light across a dimly lit bar. Its heat chased the briskness of the fall air from our cheeks.
“I’m just warning you,” I said to Lynne as we stepped inside, “I’m going to ask them about Katie.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said.
We took a booth next to windows that overlooked a labyrinth of decks and porticos in back of the old building. The outdoor seating was closed for the season, but it was easy to envision the lively, high-spirited atmosphere this place was known for on a hot July day. Katie would have had a ball working here.
“What can I get you ladies to drink?” asked a perky waitress with spiky pink hair. A diamond nose piercing caught the sunlight as she spoke. “Daily special: Three-dollar Miller Lite!”
“Can we get coffee—do you sell coffee?” Lynne asked.
“Sure! I can make you coffee,” she said. “Wanna add some Baileys and Frangelico?” She winked.
“Sounds delicious,” Lynne said.
She turned to place our order, but I stopped her. “Uh, do you mind if I ask—how long have you worked here?”
“About five years.”
“My daughter was going to work here, too, two summers ago. Her name was Katie Vaudrey. Do you remember the girl who died on her way to her first day of work?”
“Oh my gosh! I totally remember!” she said, covering her mouth with her hands. “That was so sad! I am so, so sorry!” She studied my face, looking for a cue. I was accustomed to this—people mirroring their responses to match mine. Would I burst out crying? Was I a wreck?
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