But in that moment, I felt no urge to cry or to shake God by the ankles or to rail at Him in protest. Why? Where is my fight?
To my utter shock, I discovered that the fight in me had faded. In its place, the sorrow that had been my constant companion these past three years mingled with an inexplicable sense of peace and unapologetic sparks of joy.
I lay there baffled and a little annoyed by this unforeseen turn of events. How can this be? My circumstances are the same—my daughter is gone; my heart is broken! Nothing has changed.
Or had it?
As I lay there with the grass getting scratchy and warm upon my face, it dawned on me: Perhaps what had changed was me. Perhaps over these three years, in tiny, indiscernible increments, I had grown. I had not thought of it as growth at the time. It had felt more like survival. But I couldn’t deny that I was not the same person I had been three years ago, or two, or one. These annual backyard struggles—like pencil lines against a kitchen doorway that mark a child’s growth—had marked my inner growth as well.
God, always the gentleman, had not rushed me or demanded I accept this life whose story line still horrified me, and perhaps always would. He had simply continued to invite and to fan little embers of joy beneath the ashes as consistent reminders of His love for me. He had not forgotten me or my family or our pain. Not once. I am good, I had sensed Him whispering to me as I stood on that ambulance bay a lifetime ago. This tragedy doesn’t change My character. It doesn’t change who I am. I am good.
Through the unfailing partnership of my pain and God’s goodness, we had settled things, He and I. Slowly over these past 1,095 days, surrender had been sidling up alongside me, unobserved. My grieving was far from over—it’s a lifelong journey, I believe—but I had come to accept the beautiful-tragic life that is mine. It wasn’t a story I had ever envisioned before Katie died, but I had found it to be a story of soulful beauty made possible as a result of her death.
In baby steps, I had accepted this uninvited life. I had surrendered.
And this is surrender: inviting laugher and sorrow to dance together in our lives, day by day and hand in hand.
Nearby, the hawthorn tree stood silhouetted against the morning sky. Its confetti petals swirled around me, and my daughter’s words echoed in my mind.
“I’m calling it The Bleeding Tree,” Katie had declared, holding up the rough draft of her final work of art.
“The Bleeding Tree? Sounds . . . significant.”
“Oh, it is! You’re going to love it. I can’t wait to tell you what it means!”
This side of heaven, I will never know fully what Katie intended to communicate through this painting she was creating for us—but I can take a guess from the clues she left behind.
For followers of Jesus like Katie and me, a tree is the cross—it’s suffering and sacrifice, and also forgiveness and redemption. A tree is seasons—autumns of spectacular dying; stark winters; hopeful springs; and lush, opulent summers. Katie had watched Scott and me navigate a barren winter in marriage—and had seen our relationship bloom again, through spring and into summer.
“I am learning never to waste pain, but to experience it fully,” she had written in her senior thesis. “I want my work to be indicative of the beauty within struggle.”
My guess—and it’s only a guess—is our daughter was celebrating that Scott and I had not wasted our season of marital pain. We had tried to steward that season well, and God had grown something beautiful as a result of our struggle. This is what her work means to me.
Today The Bleeding Tree hangs incomplete, yet in a place of honor in our home. Although it is but a shadow of the finished piece Katie intended, I cherish it fully for what it is, not for what it might have been. I marvel at its simple beauty.
So it is with my life. This side of heaven, I will never know the full meaning behind the death of my daughter—or even if there is a pre-scripted meaning to such tragedies here on earth. But I am learning to cherish each day for what it is, not what it might have been. And despite my limited vantage point and incomplete understanding, Katie’s life and death hang in a place of honor in my soul.
The morning breeze sent a fresh flutter of hawthorn petals cascading around me. An unrestrained swell of release washed over me, and two warm tears slipped down my cheeks, soaking into the earth.
I sat up and grinned, plucked a blade of grass to chew on, and breathed deep lungfuls of the morning air. The breeze picked up, rustling the distant cottonwood leaves with greater vigor, but its buds had not yet blossomed, and no cottony, miniature-angel tufts floated free. Late this year, I guess. Not a problem. God is good.
I stood, stretched, and turned toward the house, ready to face the day.
We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL
Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Epilogue
A FEW MONTHS BEFORE THE FOUR-YEAR MARK, Matt and Andrea called to tell us the best of all news: They were expecting their first baby! We couldn’t have been more overjoyed. A brand-new Vaudrey! The first addition to the family since Matt had married Andrea almost five years ago—and the first Vaudrey birth since Tember was born in 1993. Woo-hoo! We were becoming grandparents—and at the tender ages of forty-nine and fifty. The baby wasn’t due until early October, seven months away (more waiting!), and we began counting the days.
Tember’s high school graduation and her senior prom coincided with the four-year mark. We flew everyone home, and Bethany and Andrea came early to fulfill Katie’s promise of helping the youngest Vaudrey sister get ready for her dance.
For Tember’s junior prom a year prior, Bethany and Andrea also had been in town, and they turned our master bathroom into a beauty salon for their kid sister. They gave her a French manicure and pedicure and applied her makeup with utmost care. They curled and styled her hair and helped her step into her dress. Their sisterly whispers, chatter, and laughter spilled from the bathroom and filled my heart. I snapped photos as they doted on the baby of the family.
This year, Tember had a job at an upscale salon in nearby South Barrington, so she had lined up appointments with professional hair stylists, makeup artists, and nail technicians. Not quite the crescendo moment of Bethany and Andrea filling in for Katie that I had envisioned! But Tember wasn’t the same eighth-grade girl who had hinted in her eulogy about being alone on this day. She was eighteen and had grown up—not just physically, but into a level of maturity that was serving her well.
“I realize now that Katie perfectly fulfilled my desires for her pre-dance help on that day of my eighth-grade dance,” she told me. “And Bethany and Andrea spoiled me in the best of ways last year. Today I’m going to take advantage of having friends at the spa who want to help me out.”
When Tember arrived home from her appointments, time was running short, so her sisters helped her put on her dress—a stunning emerald-green satin gown accented with silver rhinestones—and applied final touches to her hair. When at last the youngest Vaudrey descended our staircase for the dance, she was indeed a vision to behold.
“Tember, I promise you,” Katie had said four years ago, “wherever I am, I will fly home for your senior prom and help you get ready. I will be here. I wouldn’t miss it for the world!”
Katie’s intentions with the promise she couldn’t keep had been fulfilled—not once, but twice—by sisters who loved her so. And who knows? Perhaps in a way beyond what my eyes could see, Katie had been here all along.
“Will you paint a mural for our baby’s nursery?” Matt asked me over the phone in late June.
“Of course!” I replied.
Katie had planned to paint a mural in Matt and Andrea’s first apartment, but it was one of the many goals she didn’t get to accomplish in her short life. I have a fraction of my daughter’s artistic talents, but this mural was within my sk
ill set—and I knew just the tools I would use.
After I hung up with Matt, I decided to do something I’d been putting off for four years. I headed to the basement to find Katie’s art toolbox.
Dusty and a little cobwebby, it sat undisturbed on the shelf where I’d stored it the day it arrived from California. I wiped away the cobwebs, sat down on the cement floor, and opened the lid.
The waft of turpentine and oil paints once again hit my nose, bringing fond remembrances. My throat tightened. I let myself explore.
The top tray of the toolbox held Katie’s paintbrushes, and in typical Katie fashion, they were in need of a good cleaning. Her senior year, I had finally boycotted gifting Katie with any new brushes until she began to care properly for the ones she had—and she did show some improvement. But today, gladly, I would clean her brushes well. Fifteen minutes and a little bristle soap would be a small price to pay for welcoming Aunt Katie’s brushes back into service on a mural for my grandchild.
In the middle tray, on top of her paints, palette knives, oil pastels, and such, I found a stack of invitations to the various senior exhibits of fellow art students at APU. Katie must have been saving the invitations—each individually designed—as examples for the day she would create an invitation for her own senior exhibit.
Underneath the invitations were a few encouraging notes from friends. Each bore thumbtack holes. Katie must’ve tacked them to the wall of her studio space. One, from Kati Harkin, closed with, “The world is truly fortunate to get to know your heart. And I am so lucky to be your friend.” Katie would say she was the lucky one. Perhaps that was part of her secret.
And there in the bottom of her toolbox was her green Starbucks apron, shoved in a bundle just where I’d left it four years ago. I pulled it out, gave it a shake, and held it up. I ran my fingers over the dried paint, and this time I did not cry. Instead, I drew the apron to my face and breathed deeply, taking in its oil-and-acrylic smells. The sturdy canvas fabric felt cool against my cheek. Covered with dried smudges, splatters, smears where Katie had wiped her hands, and the faint fingerprint she had left behind, this apron itself had become a work of art, a canvas that told the story of my girl.
I pulled the apron strap over my head and smoothed out its wrinkles against my chest. I sat for a moment, looking down at it, thinking. There is no turning back. I would bring it to California and wear it while I painted my grandchild’s mural, adding my own smudges and fingerprints to the story this apron told. I was not hoping to channel Katie’s artistic talents through the apron—nothing like that. But I wouldn’t complain if I felt a bit of her joy as I painted, joy she would have been sharing with me—perhaps was sharing now—in this pre-auntie, pre-grandma season, which was short-lived and delicious. This was a good plan.
Beneath the apron, under heavy tubes of oil paint, I found two Tazo tea bags—Wild Sweet Orange and Awake. Classic Katie—of course she would store tea along with her art supplies, making it easy for her to engage the savory senses as part of her “artist’s life.” I turned the tea bags over in my hand and imagined my daughter sipping from a cup and sharing a conversation with a friend in her little studio space at APU, the pungent aroma of the tea mingling with the fumes of paint and turpentine. I imagined how she might have brewed herself a cup of tea late at night as she finished an art project, alone with her joy and her tools and her God. I would bring the tea bags, along with her brushes, paints, and the apron, to paint a mural in California.
In mid-August, Tember and I took a train across the country to California so she could begin her new life as a college freshman at—you guessed it—Azusa Pacific University. We went a week early so I could paint the mural. We crashed at Matt and Andrea’s, and the next morning I set to work.
The expectant parents had chosen Nintendo’s Baby Mario as the theme. I didn’t even know that baby Mario was a thing, but it is, and Matt introduced me to Baby Mario, Luigi, Daisy, and Peach, to Yoshi and mushroom toads and flying turtles, to Mario clouds, stars, and trees. I pencil-sketched a Baby Mario scene filled with these characters, spanning the two walls that surrounded the baby’s crib. Then I pulled Katie’s apron over my neck, tied its strings around my waist, mixed her acrylic paints on her palette, loaded her clean-as-a-whistle Grumbacher half-inch sable brush, and got busy.
I spent the next four days immersed in the mural. I wiped my paint-splattered fingers on Katie’s apron, and I rinsed her brushes (thoroughly!). Twice I brewed myself a cup of her tea, steeping the bags that had spent four years nestled alongside Katie’s oil paints and art supplies. I would not wholeheartedly recommend a cup of Wild Sweet Orange and turpentine tea for others, but I drank it for myself, and I toasted my middle daughter the artist—the lover of God and beauty and people. And I toasted the yet-to-come grandchild, whose fresh eyes would wake from a nap, and blink, and look upon a mural painted with brushes that could tell countless stories and carried their artist’s joy.
On September 20, I witnessed firsthand the grand entrance of the lovely Cadence Ruth Vaudrey—six pounds, five ounces of delicate perfection! The waiting was over—and this event had certainly been worth the wait! When at long last I held little Cadence in my arms, my eyes were hungry to memorize every bit of her. She was scrumptious to behold—tiny fingernails, a dusting of dark hair, perfect little lips, eyebrows, and ears—and eyes so large she looked a bit like a Nintendo character herself. Yet her entire face was no bigger than a saltine. (I measured with a cracker from Andrea’s hospital dinner tray.) My granddaughter was smart, too! When she gave a tiny, baby-birdlike yawn, we all had no choice but to marvel at her brilliance.
And on that day, our family turned a page. We welcomed a delightful new chapter into our lives, a chapter filled with promise. A brand-new family had been formed: Our son became a father and our daughter-in-law a mother. Aunts, uncles, and grandfathers were created that day—and grandmothers, too. You may call me Nana.
Welcome, little Cadence. What shall your nana tell you about this life you have been given? What promises can I make about this world you have graced?
I, your nana, hereby promise to love you always, to let you add way too many chocolate chips to the cookie dough, and to talk your parents into letting you keep the puppy that “followed us home.” I will read you every Laura Ingalls Wilder book once we finish with Junie B. Jones. I will show you how to plant pumpkin seeds, make apricot jam, and determine if a peach is ripe for the picking. I will help you sew a quilt if you’d like, and I’ll explain why strong verbs trump adverbs every time. I’ll teach you tricks for getting a pony to take her bit, and most certainly I will buy you Levi’s instead of Calvin Klein when Levi’s is the best choice for the job. We will dig up the potatoes in the fall, climb the tree one branch higher than you think we can, and tame raccoons as needed. We will have grand adventures, you and I. I can hardly wait!
Little Cadence, this world is cradled by the hands of a loving God who always has your best interest at heart—though you may not fully understand His ways this side of eternity. His thumbprints are everywhere if you simply take time to notice. And although someday you—like all of us—will taste heartache, let me share a secret your nana has learned: By inviting heartache to do its transforming work, your life will grow richer, more meaningful, and more marked by both beauty and joy—not in spite of, but because of the pain that has seasoned it along the way.
Cadence—“Cady,” as they plan to call you, a nice variation on a theme—God willing, for many decades to come you will bless those around you with the talents and gifts He has given you to bring a bit of His Kingdom to this broken world. You will play hard, love deeply, and experience fervently the life you have been given. Your every day will enrich those around you, and you will leave ripples too.
And when you grow old, perhaps with grandchildren of your own, you will scoop them into your arms and kiss their velvet cheeks and necks and toes as I am kissing yours today.
And one day when you step across the thresh
old into eternity, you’ll be welcomed by those who went before you—a mom and a dad, nanas and papas, aunties and uncles, and also a certain brown-eyed beauty, the aunt you never got to meet. When she spots you, no doubt she will squeal with delight, wrap you in her arms, and swing you around, filling your ears with her laughter. Then perhaps she’ll take you by the hand—Katie and Cady—and introduce you to the One she loves best of all: the God of all beauty and joy, who has looked after her family with such goodness and tenderness and faithfulness while she has been away.
About the Art
FOR ME, EACH PIECE OF KATIE’S ART tells two distinct stories: the primary story she intended to communicate when she created it, and the secondary story of the work’s creative process. It is this secondary story that has left the most vibrant brushstrokes of memory in my mind: what Katie was doing on the day she painted it; what she was wearing at the time; her depth of passion for whatever wrong she was fighting, which drove certain pieces; and always the flash in her eyes and earnest intensity in her voice when she described its meaning. These secondary stories can be summed up in one word: joy. It gave her such joy to create. And it is with joy that I invite you to explore a few of the secondary stories behind my daughter’s art—and a few photos as well, which hold stories of their own.
FRONT COVER
The Bleeding Tree
Watercolor on sketch paper, 14˝ x 21˝ | Age 19
This rough draft, completed the day before she died, is Katie’s final work of art. (Sorry, Katie, for putting one of your rough drafts on the cover of a book!) This final work is a treasure to us, and someday Scott and I will learn what our daughter really meant by its cryptic title.
INSIDE FRONT COVER
Colors of Goodbye Page 29