Colors of Goodbye

by September Vaudrey

  “Wow, thank you, Terry. That’s so good to hear. Katie would love to know that her life left such a ripple.”

  “Absolutely it did. We want to honor her contribution to Azusa Pacific. Could we fly you and your family down here in May? We’d like you and Scott to receive her diploma on her behalf during the commencement ceremony.”

  His words caught me by complete surprise. “Wow . . . I am deeply honored. But what about the other students graduating that day? This is their celebration. Won’t it detract from their big day?”

  “Trust me, we’ve talked it through, and we are doing this for our students as much as for you guys. So many of these graduates knew and loved Katie, and she will be in the back of their minds on graduation day, whether or not we mention her. We want to offer them some closure. And Jon will make sure it won’t detract from the celebration. You’ll just accept her diploma and then step off the stage. No need to decide right away. Talk to Scott. But get back to me either way, so we can book tickets.”

  We exchanged goodbyes and I hung up. Then I put my hands to my face, stunned and deeply grateful for APU’s generous offer. But mostly I just felt so stinking proud of my daughter. “I want to leave ripples in the lives I leave behind,” she had written at fifteen. Indeed, God had used this one person’s life, which she had stewarded with purpose and fervor, to leave such ripples. I took a moment and gave myself permission to acknowledge that Katie had been a remarkable human being. Too good to be true.

  I told Scott about the phone call. After being reassured that Jon Wallace would not let it become “the Katie show” at the expense of the other graduates, he agreed it could be very cool. We checked with the kids and got a thumbs-up all the way around.

  “Terry’s right,” Andrea told me. “This will help the other students. A girl in my class died when we were freshmen. And it was really hard on us. She was in the back of our minds on graduation day. This is a good plan, Mom, not just for our family but also for the school.”

  Bethany added a poignant observation. “This graduation ceremony will be the final point in time where our family can say, ‘At this moment, on this day, Katie would have been right here, in this exact place, doing this.’”

  The school had offered us the sweetest of gifts, and we were all aware it would be yet another heavy turning of the page.

  I called Sandy in Spokane to tell her about the school’s offer.

  “That’s incredible!” she said. “How would you feel about our family flying down for the ceremony? Because, well, we are flying down.” Once again the McConkeys would be at our side.

  The weekend was shaping up to be quite the event. Our whole family would be together, plus the McConkeys and my mom (Dad would be on a prescheduled fishing trip in northern Canada). Matt and Andrea invited everyone to bunk at their house—thirteen of us! Air mattresses, camping mats, sofas, and beds—I love that Matt and Andrea love a mob.

  As graduation drew near, I began thinking this weekend might provide the sort of communal grief moment I’d been longing for with the kids. Katie had been gone almost three years now, and although she came up in conversations all the time and we did unofficial grief check-ins periodically with one another, rarely had we let ourselves grieve together as a family-minus-one. And I longed for that.

  Scott knew my propensity for prying uninvited, and he could see where this was heading.

  “Let the weekend unfold naturally,” he reminded me. “Losing a sibling is not the same as losing a child. The kids’ needs are different from yours and mine. What do you want? What would serve your process?”

  His question gave me pause. What did I want?

  For one thing, I wanted a check-in. I wanted assurance that my kids were moving along healthily in their grief—that they were healing in their own unique ways. I hoped this event might give me a peek into their journeys and put my worrisome mama heart at ease. That’s one thing I wanted, to be sure.

  Also, I wanted this to be over. Psychologically, I was still waiting—waiting for what? May 31, 2008, was the left-sided bookend on this era in my life, and I was still waiting for some magical right-sided bookend to arrive and close out this mess so I could get my old life back. As I pondered Scott’s question, I realized I was hoping that this graduation ceremony would be that right-sided bookend—an unrealistic expectation that I would need to set aside.

  “Just let the weekend be what it’s meant to be,” Scott kept reminding me, “and be grateful for whatever that is.”

  50

  “I WANT TO HAVE A TALK WITH THE KIDS about how they are grieving,” Tember told me as we sat side by side on our flight to California. “Bethany and I talk about Katie, but the boys don’t ever seem to talk about her—at least to me. I don’t know how they are doing inside. It’s weird that we don’t talk about it more together, you know?”

  “Agreed,” I said, very cool-like. Woo-hoo! Has she been reading my mind?

  “I want to talk about the fact that we don’t talk about it,” she said. “I think we should have a family meeting and just check in with everyone and talk about why it’s so hard to grieve as a group. And I’ll lead the meeting.”

  “Sounds great, Tem,” I said. She sounded more like a sage mom than the sixteen-year-old baby of the family. This kid amazed me, and of course I loved her plan.

  Once all the Vaudreys and McConkeys and my mom had arrived in California, we headed to a quaint little diner near Bethany’s apartment for dinner. Laughter and good food dominated the night as we caught up on one another’s lives.

  The next day was the graduation. Bethany’s Facebook status that morning articulated our sentiments perfectly:

  Today I will be grateful for what was, instead of longing for what should have been.

  The poignancy of this event was striking deeper than anyone had anticipated. By midmorning, the laughter had subsided, and a gentle pall hung in the air. In the back of our minds was the reality that Katie, the girl who had delighted in family and fun and pomp and circumstance, was missing her big day. By two in the afternoon, the emotional fragility of our group was beginning to show. We were getting ragged around the edges.

  The original plan was to stay for the whole commencement, but Scott pulled me aside and said, “There is no way we can make it through the entire ceremony. We’re all on the bubble as it is. I know you want to stay for the whole thing, and I’ll stay with you if you want. But after Katie’s diploma, we need to release the kids.”

  Scott was right. He called an audible and told the kids they could slip out as soon as Katie’s diploma was in hand.

  Blue sky, sunshine, and palm trees waving in a light breeze gave Azusa Pacific’s campus a postcard-like beauty as we arrived. Kati Harkin, who had taken a year off from college and wouldn’t be graduating that day, joined us. An electric sense of celebration reverberated in the air as parents and families scurried about with bouquets of roses or flower leis for their graduates. Terry Franson met us in the parking lot and ushered us to a bank of reserved seats near the back of the stadium so the kids could slip out easily afterward.

  “I’ve got seats up front for you two,” Terry said to Scott and me, “so you can access the stage easily. Stay here for now. I’ll come get you when it’s time.”

  As the first notes of “Pomp and Circumstance” floated through the afternoon air, a parade of black caps and gowns—APU’s class of 2011—began filing into the stadium.

  I recalled what Katie said at her high school commencement just four years ago: “My girlfriends have all been shopping for new graduation dresses,” she had told us after an afternoon of thrifting. “But who’s gonna see a new dress under those giant muumuu graduation gowns we have to wear? I’m placing my money on the shoes!”

  She reached into a shopping bag and pulled out a pair of hot-pink pumps with four-inch heels. She would choose that same color for my petunias a year later.

  And sure enough, among the sea of Fremd High School green caps and gowns filing into
the stadium that day, those hot-pink pumps stood out like a beacon, making Katie easy to spot from any seat in the house.

  What shoes would she have chosen for today? No black flats, I guarantee! As the APU graduates continued filing in, I thought of the graduate who was missing—a radiant brunette in brightly colored heels—waving happily at her family as she walked by. “Are you filming me?” she might have called out. And afterward, she would have squealed with delight when she found us, jumping into our arms, filled with joy and gratitude and the kind of self-pride that makes for a healthy person.

  Once the class was seated, Terry motioned to Scott and me, and we followed him to our chairs up front. “Just step up to the stage when Jon calls you,” he said.

  After a Scripture reading, prayer, and the commencement speeches, Dr. Jon Wallace approached the podium.

  “Could I invite Scott and September Vaudrey to the platform, please?” he said. An eerie hush fell over the stadium. We rose and walked up the stairs. Jon shook our hands warmly, then turned to the microphone.

  “Katie Vaudrey began her freshman year at Azusa Pacific in the fall of 2007. She spent her year in Trinity Hall. She was a vibrant, motivated freshman who inspired other Chicagoland students to come to the West Coast. Katie was strong and a faithful follower of Jesus Christ. Her love for God was evident to everybody who met her. She was a masterful artist, full of joy, and she had a continual hunger to help others.”

  As I listened to Jon’s words, I was reminded yet again of what a treasure Katie was. My eyes stung. I bit my trembling lip. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t draw attention. I stole a glance at stoic Scott and saw large tears rolling down his cheeks. Well, heck. So much for keeping our emotions in check.

  Jon continued. “Tragically, while she was home for the summer after her freshman year, Katie passed from a ruptured cerebral aneurysm. Katie’s presence in our community has been missed. On behalf of this community, it is my privilege to remember Katie and celebrate her remarkable life among us by presenting a diploma to her mother and father—and by extension to her classmates and her friends and her community. Would you please stand and recognize Katie Vaudrey with me?”

  The stadium stood to its feet, and the crowd began clapping for our daughter. Jon stepped back from the mic and wrapped us in his arms.

  “Thank you for coming here and doing this for our students,” he said. “It’s an important part of their healing process.”

  Scott wiped his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Thank you so much for all you’ve done for us. We love this school and we love you.”

  “It’s our honor,” Jon said, handing us her diploma. “We framed a copy of this, and it waits for you in my office. You may pick it up at any time.”

  We exited the platform and ducked behind the stage’s backdrop. The swell of applause continued long and loud in our ears. Even after the people in the grandstands stopped clapping, Katie’s graduating class on the field kept up their applause, honoring the girl they knew and loved and lost.

  She mattered. Not just to us, but to Terry Franson, to Dr. Wallace, and to this stadium of kids who would not sit down. She made a difference in this world, and she will not be forgotten.

  Sandy, her husband, Bobby, and my mom met us at the back of the stadium, and we were all pretty much a blubbery mess. But today’s tears felt different. They were tears of relief—a healing salve.

  “Where are the kids?” I asked. Their chairs sat empty.

  “As soon as you were off the stage, they bolted,” Sandy said. “This hit them very hard, especially Bethany and September. They just clung to one another, sobbing. It was pretty heartbreaking. They all headed for Starbucks down the road, just to be together and talk.”

  The ceremony moved on, and Jon Wallace began calling students’ names and handing out diplomas. The crowd quickly regained its jubilance, as was fitting for this day. We slipped out.

  At Starbucks, we found Matt, Andrea, Kati Harkin, and the McConkey boys standing together in the parking lot, red-eyed and soft-spoken. Matt led us to Bethany, Sam, and Tember, who were crammed into the backseat of Bethany’s Honda Civic—the older two flanking Tember, their arms around her, weeping. Matt climbed into the passenger’s seat, reaching his big-brother arm around to Bethany and resting his hand on her shoulder. Scott opened the back passenger door, and we bent down, eye level with the kids.

  “Hey, you guys,” he said. “We are so sorry. This is so very hard.” There was nothing else to say. We just knelt there, crying together, remembering our missing sister and daughter on her graduation day. Katie’s absence—and maybe her presence?—felt tangible and concrete to me as we mourned the loss of our family of seven, the Vaudreys we once had been.

  That day was healing and productive and right. Those moments in a Starbucks parking lot were exactly what our family needed and what my soul had been aching for—what I had tried to force on my own terms, in my own timing over these past three years. Yet once I let go of trying to make it happen, it happened on its own. The environment here had done its work; Tember had risen to the occasion; and there inside a Honda Civic on a warm spring evening, a beautiful-horrible scene of familial grief had unfolded organically, in a way none of us could have predicted but all of us desperately needed.

  When it was time to caravan back to Matt and Andrea’s for dinner, Scott worried about Bethany driving her car. “She’s too shaken to get behind the wheel,” he said.

  “I’ll drive,” Matt said, crossing over to the driver’s seat. “We’ll meet you at home.”

  And so in the privacy of Bethany’s car, at sixty-five miles an hour on Interstate 10, the four sibs had their grief conversation. The bonds between them deepened through the sharing of their common loss.

  Tember—and her mama—got their wish.

  The graduation ceremony had released three years of pent-up grief. It was as if we had all been holding our breath and finally exhaled together. It wasn’t the bookend I’d hoped for—there could be no such bookend, really; it wasn’t possible—but those days brought a degree of resolution that exceeded my expectations, especially with the kids. I had received what my soul had been longing for—a shared moment, an event, a stake in the ground that said, Yes, we lost someone who meant the world to us, and we are heartbroken. Our lives will never be the same. And yes, we have survived. Our lives had once been beautiful, and our lives are beautiful still.

  Over the next few days with the McConkeys and my mom, between meals and laughter and movies and a day at Universal Studios, the conversations drifted back to Katie and the trauma our families had experienced together, to what each of us had lost, and to how much we had appreciated one another along the way.

  On our last morning together, Sam was lounging on the sofa next to Sandy and me, listening as we talked. He seemed pensive and low.

  “Sam,” I said, “people often mention how hard this has been for Tember, that Katie was her best friend—which is true.”

  “Yep,” he said. “No doubt. And Tember has done really well. I’m proud of her.”

  “Me too. But Sam, sometimes I wonder if perhaps you’ve felt like you are in the shadows of Tember’s loss, just a bit. Not many people realize how close you and Katie were too.” His dark-brown eyes filled immediately. I laid my hand on his shoulder, and large tears began rolling down his cheeks, one after the other. “Katie adored you, Sam. The two of you had such a great relationship, son. I can’t imagine how hard this has been on you, how deep your loss must go.”

  He draped his arm across his face, and his chest heaved. I waited.

  “Yeah,” he said from somewhere beneath his elbow. “We loved each other a lot. She was just . . . she was just great.” More tears. I kissed his arm lightly.

  “Katie would be so proud of you, Sam, so proud of the man you are becoming. I am so very sorry for how much you have lost.”

  Before we flew home to Chicago, Scott and Sam picked up Katie’s diploma from Jon Wallace’s office. The school
had indeed framed it—and wrapped it with a crimson bow.

  Our girl had left ripples.

  51

  WHEN WE ARRIVED HOME IN CHICAGO, spring was cresting and the earthy aroma of gardens and freshly mowed lawns once again triggered my body memory of the heartache we had incurred at this time of year. Each spring, I had felt the impending arrival of another anniversary of Katie’s accident—and its familiar tug toward God. I felt it again now. He was calling.

  The three-year mark fell on a Tuesday. I awoke early, dressed, and stepped outside. The energetic serenade of songbirds fell silent at my intrusion, then slowly and bravely they resumed their chatter. Pale-pink petals from our hawthorn tree blossoms—the tree featured in Katie’s last work of art—fluttered onto the deck like confetti. A morning breeze sent wisps of thin-white clouds speeding across the sky, rustling the new leaves of the cottonwoods just beyond our fence line. The Midwest humidity had not yet made its summer descent, and the air was warm but without the sticky.

  I walked to my vegetable garden at the far side of our yard and said good morning to the snow peas and lettuce. Then I sat down on the lawn and let the rising sun warm my skin. Our dogs, Henry and Alice, trotted over, happy to find me at ground level. I scratched behind their respective ears until, satisfied, they romped off to explore the yard.

  Three years ago and every spring since, I had resisted a primal urge to lie down, bury my face in this sod, and rant at God, or cling to Him, or both. These past few months, the urge had grown stronger. I had sensed a showdown coming, and today I was braced for a fight. I lay back, rolled onto my belly, and stretched out my arms. I ran my hands over the lawn and pressed my forehead to the ground. My fingers tightened around fistfuls of grass. I drew my breath. Bring it on.