Our New Good Friday and Jenn's Funeral Talk
Today, I woke up with a deep reverence that I have not felt before on Good Friday. I mean, I have always felt feelings of gratitude and humility thinking about what Christ must have felt on this day, the day he was crucified. But this morning, having the feelings of the last few months so fresh in my heart, I felt... different, changed. As I read with my son this morning as he was brushing sleep from his eyes, this passage stood out to me.
Last week, before we closed the casket, we slipped a golden snitch necklace around Madi’s neck. Other Harry Potter-philes will know that inscribed on the outside of the snitch are the words, “I open at the close.” I’ll let you read the books to understand the meaning it had for Harry. For Madi, we believe there is much that has opened to her since the close of her life on earth, much of which we will not know or understand until we also pass on to join her. What we do know is that her legacy here has also opened at the close of her mortality. Madi has joined the strong ranks of our ancestors by leaving a legacy for all of us to reflect on and learn from.
We decided that Madi’s legacy involves eight main points. I will talk on four, and Kurt will talk on the other four.
First legacy: Read more.
The legacy of books runs deep in our family. We discovered list of possessions at death from one of our ancestors who had lived in the sixteenth century when books were scarce and expensive. It included two apples, a cow, a metal pan, and six books. After their marriage, my
own parents returned all their wedding gifts and used the money to buy books instead. They chastised my older siblings who decided to give some of our books a bath when they were little by saying, “Be nice to the books. Books are our friends!”
Indeed to Madi, books were just as real and loveable as her human friends. When Kurt and I were poor and newly married, we did not spend any of our discretionary income on toys. Instead, Madi had a large library of hand-me-down children’s books from our older siblings and parents. I would often allow her to gum on her board books in her infant seat as we drove (not the safest decision in retrospect). We threw away many of those books because the pages would dissolve off of the binding with her literally feasting on good literature. When she began to crawl, she used to crawl to the bookshelf in her room and pull off all the books she had, spread them around her in one giant arc, then sit and open them and look at the pictures for long stretches of time. We had a few casualties, some of them getting pages ripped out, torn, or eaten, but when she eventually developed the fine motor skills to handle them appropriately she would sit with a book on her lap for twenty or thirty minutes at a time. For a tired mom of a six month old, this was a (much-needed) miracle. In order to get more sleep, after Madi drifted to sleep at night, Kurt or I would sneak into her room and pile books at the foot of her crib. When she woke up with the sun in the morning, we would hear her babble or cry for us, then stop as she discovered the books. We relished the additional sleep in the morning until the last of the books had been tossed over the edge and she was done and ready for breakfast.
As she grew, her hunger for knowledge grew with her. My favorite part of the day was (and still is) coming in to read to the kids at bedtime. Because of Madi’s example, the younger kids learned early how to listen and appreciate read-aloud stories. I remember camping out with Madi and Max in our old house and telling Kurt I would just read until they fell asleep. Unfortunately, Madi became so enraptured by the story that she often wouldn’t fall asleep, even after hours of me reading. Because of this, we made it through most of the CS Lewis and Little House books before she was even five. Even as a twelve year old, she loved to sit and listen to me read picture books to the little ones. At Christmas at Grandma’s house this year, she pulled me to the couch the first day we got there and asked me to read Shel Silverstein’s, “Where the Sidewalk Ends.” We sat there for two hours reading the entire book and she still wanted more. Most of what was on her Christmas list this year was books. She saved her money every year so that she could buy books from the used book sale at the library. She came home this year with two large canvas bags full of books.
I began reading the Harry Potter series to her in kindergarten, but we were reading too slowly for her liking. So she snuck the book out during the day and read ahead. She tore her way through the series until I made her stop at book 5 and wait a little to finish it. I naively assumed that it was too scary for a six year old. She was so mad and thought it was unfair. I finally relented in first grade and she devoured the last books in just a few weeks. She was not at all scared and of course thought I had been completely unreasonable. Witches, wizards, ghosts, goblins, werewolves, all those scary things that most children her age found frightening, were all just part of a great story in her world. They did not scare her in the least. This year, Harry Potter became an important tool in her healing kit. After her surgeries when it was harder for her eyes to focus and move as quickly as they had before, she would turn on the Harry Potter audiobook by Jim Dale and listen to it for hours and hours as she colored or did something else. She listened to dozens of audio books, though she always went back to Harry Potter during times of stress and uncertainty. I suspect that the stories full of fear and anxiety, where bad things happen to good people, but where good ultimately triumphs in the end, were a safe and hopeful place to process what was coming at her in the real world. She listened to the series almost thirteen times since last April. One day during this really hard year we’ve had, she said to me, “don’t you ever just wish that you could actually go inside the story and just stay there for a while?” I did! I still do! But Madi didn’t stay there. She came out and faced her trials with strength. She drew lessons from what she was reading and applied it to her situation. I will forever think of Madi when I read this scripture from a passage in our scriptural canon, the Doctrine and Covenants. “…seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom, seek learning even by study and also by faith;”
Second legacy: create daily.
Madi made art out of the ordinary of everyday life: dirt, grass, paper, tissues, smoothies, food… Of course, she thought it was art. Sometimes I had different opinions about it. I had to make the rule when she was four that we only made potions on Halloween, not every day at lunch. As a young girl, she especially loved to play with flour. When she was three, I remember her chanting “FLOULER! I like to play in it. FLOULER! I like to pour it. FLOULER! I like to drink it. Etc…” I had very ambivalent feelings about all her messy creations, loving the process, hating the clean-up - not just because it was a pain to clean up, but also because I was destroying good art! Like when I had to clear away her picture of the temple made out of peas, tortillas, and refried beans.
Her artwork as a child, like great works of art, made me feel things and see life in a different way. I think it’s because she lived much of her life in what Kurt and I termed “Madi World.” From the glimpses we had of it, we found it a beautifully colorful, warm, happy and luxuriously comfortable place. Rules there were different, but fair. The weather: always warm and sunny. The people were lovely and interesting. We had the pleasure of meeting her hoards of imaginary friends. Most beloved by us were her imaginary husband, Pruno, and her darling imaginary children, “Stylish,” “Madagascar,” and “Mads.” As she introduced her imaginary family to friends on the playground when she was four, I felt like the proudest imaginary grandma in the whole world. I recorded in my journal in July of 2008, shortly after she turned three, “Madi was playing Cinderella and using one of the sponge balls Grandma Knight gave her as a sponge to wash her picnic table. I had to play the wicked stepmother and basically just say no to anything she asked me to do. I think sometimes she really wanted me to say yes, but then realized that I had to say no to stay true to the part. She cleaned the whole bench really well by the time she got tired of the game.”
Her imagination spilled into her performing, as well. She loved performing to anyone and everyone who would watch. She would organize “shows” whenever she could, which usually included a semi- riveting plot line, sometimes special effects or music, and almost always a vocal performance or two. While to some she may have come across as more introverted, when she got on the stage, she was bigger than life. Her singing frequently moved me to tears, and still will, I’m sure, until the day I can hear her again in person. I have found in my own study of the plan God has shown us that creation plays a prominent role in it. I have watched Madi find happiness and joy through the act of creating on a daily basis, and I intend to follow her example as I wend my way through the rest of mortality.
Third legacy: See yourself as you really are, not as you think you should be.
One of my favorite parts about Madi was that she cared little about others’ opinions of her. After her first surgery, she had a big stripe of hair shaved off of the left side of her head with a Frankenstein-esque surgical incision stitched in a wide C around her ear. She bounced back pretty quickly from the surgery, considering how invasive the procedure had been. She wanted to come with me to the store about a week after we got home from the hospital. When we went out, it was clear that people were staring, some out of fear, some out of curiosity, some out of disgust. Madi looked at me and said, “I know I should care that people are staring at my head wound, but then I think, “Hey, I just had brain surgery, I think I get a pass.” Madi knew that she was precious to Heavenly Father. And she respected the commandments he had given her. She followed them, not out of fear or because the people around her were obeying, but because she genuinely knew that they would make her happy in the end. Her integrity was admirable. We started listening to an audio book once that had gotten rave reviews. We were both really excited to hear it. Once we got about a chapter in, there were quite a few swear words. Madi interrupted the book and said, “Mom, I don’t want to listen to this anymore. There’s too much bad language in it.” Admittedly, I was disappointed. I probably would have continued to listen because it was a really good story (clearly she didn’t get this from me)! She felt like that about all media and would choose not to consume if it made her feel bad. She chose well not out of guilt, but because once she realized it would not uplift her, she sincerely lost the desire to do it. She had an innate understanding of who she was, that she was daughter of royalty, and she did not need to sink to the world’s level in order to find enjoyment. She respected who she was and always stayed true to it. When I asked her after her first surgery what it meant to be a child of God, she said she felt like it meant protection. That He would always watch out for her and take care of her. She had seen this physically with the surgery and cancer, but she also felt it spiritually, too. She knew how to access that power and stuck to those principles like glue.
Fourth legacy: Be tough, but pliable
When Madi was little, a friend of ours put together a little soccer clinic for our kids. On the first day of the clinic, one of the children made a mistake and started crying. One of Madi’s 5 year old friends, after giving a massive eye roll, looked at the kid and said, “What? There’s no crying in soccer!”
Madi embodied this sentiment. After going through two brain surgeries without a tear, I sat by her hospital bed half expecting her to look over at me and say, “What? Mom! There’s no crying in brain cancer!”
As a little girl on the playground, Madi would frequently trip or fall down. I think over the years, she ran in front of swings and got kicked over at least half a dozen times. Every time, the other mothers would gasp and look at me, then at her waiting for the maelstrom to ensue. But every time, little Madi would pop right back up and keep on running hardly even noticing that she’d suffered any kind of setback. She rarely cried from pain. She saved tears for the more important things like not being able to have ice cream or having to go to the bathroom. I remember marveling as a young mother at her strength. This year, if I have learned anything from Madi, it is that strength is a choice. I have gained incredible admiration and respect for her as I watched the patience, faith, and grace with which she dealt with these struggles. She has always been good at self-soothing, but this year was just breath-taking. She dealt with challenges that most people will never have to face and she did it with humor and courage. She trusted us – her parents and medical team - implicitly that we would choose the best options for her health. She accepted the hard things she had to do with faith, knowing that they would ultimately help her in the long-run. Recently, I was telling Madi a story of my grandfather whose feet had gotten frostbit and gangrene from being submerged in freezing rain in a foxhole during WWII. The doctors told him they would have to amputate his feet in the morning. It ended well, they didn’t have to amputate; but as we were telling her this story, Madi was apparently fading in and out of sleep, but snapped to attention when she heard us say that the doctors would have to amputate. She loudly said, “I can hear you, you know… I don’t want to hear about what the doctors are going to do to me.” She laughed in relief when she found out we were talking about my grandpa, not her. The sweetest thing to me was that she did not question why or what they were going to do. She did not even say, ‘why are they going to amputate my legs for brain cancer?” She just accepted that what Kurt and I were talking about was in her best interest. That faith is exactly how she trusted in Heavenly Father, too. She always knew that He was there, helping her, even though he didn’t take this trial away. We would often say in our prayers, “thank you for our trials, even though
we hate them.” And she truly exemplified the ability to submit peacefully to the will of God. That legacy – I hope- will live on through our other kids and our grandkids and rest heavily on the following generations long after we all are gone.
I would be willing to bet that Madi is here right now, basking in the warmth of people expressing love and admiration of her life and mission on earth. I recently posted on social media a picture of her before our lives turned upside down… before we knew I was pregnant with a baby who wouldn’t live. Before we knew about the ugly cancer that would ultimately take her life. I long to have that day back. I would hug her and cry and read with her and talk about life and friends and school. But then I think about the person I am now today after all that has transpired, the way our family has changed because of her, and I feel truly humbled at what she accomplished in her short life. I told my friends recently that I felt like Madi handed me a pair of glasses that suddenly brought the world into crisp focus… and then left. I am so sad that she is gone. I miss her more than I can possibly express. I am sad that she will miss all the milestones her friends will get to have here on earth. But I also think of her legacy of learning, creation, integrity, and strength, and I can’t imagine anyone having a better skill set to deal with what she had to endure. I feel inside that somehow there’s a purpose to this… that maybe she even chose this path before she came. I think maybe she knew what she would have to give up and was willing to do it, knowing it would have a happy ending. There is an Albus Dumbledore quote that we had displayed in her room- that she memorized at the end. It says, “Happiness can be found in the darkest of times if one only remembers to turn on the light.” Madi always just knew how to turn on the light. She deliberately chose to live in the light. We may not feel the happiness now, but I have seen from her example that it’s there if we choose deliberately to find it. And we will. I know we will. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Christ had just finished the excruciating pain in Gethsemane and his opponents came to take him, including Judas Iscariot. In one swift kiss, Judas turned him over to his enemies. Peter angry about this turn of events, reached out his sword and cut off the servant's ear. Christ took the ear and restored the servant's ear - made him whole - then turned to Peter and said - maybe a little disappointingly- "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?"
Christ could have stopped what was happening to him, but he didn't because there was so much more that would come from His death that what would come from his life, were He to stay. As I have watched beautiful things come over the last six weeks from Madi's passing, I have wept as I have realized that God could have sent twelve legions of angels to save Madi, but instead he sent them to welcome her home. Both Kurt and I feel strongly that this was her plan. Perhaps she did not need 80 years to accomplish what she accomplished in her short 12 years. And while I do not presume to equate our sweet daughter's mission to Christ's mission, I do find great joy in thinking that she spent her time on earth helping lead others toward God.
After my rambling, here is the talk I gave here in Boston (similar to the one I gave in Utah).
Madi’s Legacy: Jenn's Funeral talk
You may have guessed from Madi’s obituary, written by a very proud Grandma Rockwood, that trying to find a manageable focus for Madi’s life proved quite difficult for Kurt and I. Having come from families where family history was a regular and established part of our daily lives, Kurt and I recognize the importance of legacy. Much of our identities have formed around and because of the legacies of ancestors from which we came.Last week, before we closed the casket, we slipped a golden snitch necklace around Madi’s neck. Other Harry Potter-philes will know that inscribed on the outside of the snitch are the words, “I open at the close.” I’ll let you read the books to understand the meaning it had for Harry. For Madi, we believe there is much that has opened to her since the close of her life on earth, much of which we will not know or understand until we also pass on to join her. What we do know is that her legacy here has also opened at the close of her mortality. Madi has joined the strong ranks of our ancestors by leaving a legacy for all of us to reflect on and learn from.
We decided that Madi’s legacy involves eight main points. I will talk on four, and Kurt will talk on the other four.
First legacy: Read more.
The legacy of books runs deep in our family. We discovered list of possessions at death from one of our ancestors who had lived in the sixteenth century when books were scarce and expensive. It included two apples, a cow, a metal pan, and six books. After their marriage, my
own parents returned all their wedding gifts and used the money to buy books instead. They chastised my older siblings who decided to give some of our books a bath when they were little by saying, “Be nice to the books. Books are our friends!”
Indeed to Madi, books were just as real and loveable as her human friends. When Kurt and I were poor and newly married, we did not spend any of our discretionary income on toys. Instead, Madi had a large library of hand-me-down children’s books from our older siblings and parents. I would often allow her to gum on her board books in her infant seat as we drove (not the safest decision in retrospect). We threw away many of those books because the pages would dissolve off of the binding with her literally feasting on good literature. When she began to crawl, she used to crawl to the bookshelf in her room and pull off all the books she had, spread them around her in one giant arc, then sit and open them and look at the pictures for long stretches of time. We had a few casualties, some of them getting pages ripped out, torn, or eaten, but when she eventually developed the fine motor skills to handle them appropriately she would sit with a book on her lap for twenty or thirty minutes at a time. For a tired mom of a six month old, this was a (much-needed) miracle. In order to get more sleep, after Madi drifted to sleep at night, Kurt or I would sneak into her room and pile books at the foot of her crib. When she woke up with the sun in the morning, we would hear her babble or cry for us, then stop as she discovered the books. We relished the additional sleep in the morning until the last of the books had been tossed over the edge and she was done and ready for breakfast.
As she grew, her hunger for knowledge grew with her. My favorite part of the day was (and still is) coming in to read to the kids at bedtime. Because of Madi’s example, the younger kids learned early how to listen and appreciate read-aloud stories. I remember camping out with Madi and Max in our old house and telling Kurt I would just read until they fell asleep. Unfortunately, Madi became so enraptured by the story that she often wouldn’t fall asleep, even after hours of me reading. Because of this, we made it through most of the CS Lewis and Little House books before she was even five. Even as a twelve year old, she loved to sit and listen to me read picture books to the little ones. At Christmas at Grandma’s house this year, she pulled me to the couch the first day we got there and asked me to read Shel Silverstein’s, “Where the Sidewalk Ends.” We sat there for two hours reading the entire book and she still wanted more. Most of what was on her Christmas list this year was books. She saved her money every year so that she could buy books from the used book sale at the library. She came home this year with two large canvas bags full of books.
I began reading the Harry Potter series to her in kindergarten, but we were reading too slowly for her liking. So she snuck the book out during the day and read ahead. She tore her way through the series until I made her stop at book 5 and wait a little to finish it. I naively assumed that it was too scary for a six year old. She was so mad and thought it was unfair. I finally relented in first grade and she devoured the last books in just a few weeks. She was not at all scared and of course thought I had been completely unreasonable. Witches, wizards, ghosts, goblins, werewolves, all those scary things that most children her age found frightening, were all just part of a great story in her world. They did not scare her in the least. This year, Harry Potter became an important tool in her healing kit. After her surgeries when it was harder for her eyes to focus and move as quickly as they had before, she would turn on the Harry Potter audiobook by Jim Dale and listen to it for hours and hours as she colored or did something else. She listened to dozens of audio books, though she always went back to Harry Potter during times of stress and uncertainty. I suspect that the stories full of fear and anxiety, where bad things happen to good people, but where good ultimately triumphs in the end, were a safe and hopeful place to process what was coming at her in the real world. She listened to the series almost thirteen times since last April. One day during this really hard year we’ve had, she said to me, “don’t you ever just wish that you could actually go inside the story and just stay there for a while?” I did! I still do! But Madi didn’t stay there. She came out and faced her trials with strength. She drew lessons from what she was reading and applied it to her situation. I will forever think of Madi when I read this scripture from a passage in our scriptural canon, the Doctrine and Covenants. “…seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom, seek learning even by study and also by faith;”
Second legacy: create daily.
Madi made art out of the ordinary of everyday life: dirt, grass, paper, tissues, smoothies, food… Of course, she thought it was art. Sometimes I had different opinions about it. I had to make the rule when she was four that we only made potions on Halloween, not every day at lunch. As a young girl, she especially loved to play with flour. When she was three, I remember her chanting “FLOULER! I like to play in it. FLOULER! I like to pour it. FLOULER! I like to drink it. Etc…” I had very ambivalent feelings about all her messy creations, loving the process, hating the clean-up - not just because it was a pain to clean up, but also because I was destroying good art! Like when I had to clear away her picture of the temple made out of peas, tortillas, and refried beans.
Her artwork as a child, like great works of art, made me feel things and see life in a different way. I think it’s because she lived much of her life in what Kurt and I termed “Madi World.” From the glimpses we had of it, we found it a beautifully colorful, warm, happy and luxuriously comfortable place. Rules there were different, but fair. The weather: always warm and sunny. The people were lovely and interesting. We had the pleasure of meeting her hoards of imaginary friends. Most beloved by us were her imaginary husband, Pruno, and her darling imaginary children, “Stylish,” “Madagascar,” and “Mads.” As she introduced her imaginary family to friends on the playground when she was four, I felt like the proudest imaginary grandma in the whole world. I recorded in my journal in July of 2008, shortly after she turned three, “Madi was playing Cinderella and using one of the sponge balls Grandma Knight gave her as a sponge to wash her picnic table. I had to play the wicked stepmother and basically just say no to anything she asked me to do. I think sometimes she really wanted me to say yes, but then realized that I had to say no to stay true to the part. She cleaned the whole bench really well by the time she got tired of the game.”
Her imagination spilled into her performing, as well. She loved performing to anyone and everyone who would watch. She would organize “shows” whenever she could, which usually included a semi- riveting plot line, sometimes special effects or music, and almost always a vocal performance or two. While to some she may have come across as more introverted, when she got on the stage, she was bigger than life. Her singing frequently moved me to tears, and still will, I’m sure, until the day I can hear her again in person. I have found in my own study of the plan God has shown us that creation plays a prominent role in it. I have watched Madi find happiness and joy through the act of creating on a daily basis, and I intend to follow her example as I wend my way through the rest of mortality.
Third legacy: See yourself as you really are, not as you think you should be.
One of my favorite parts about Madi was that she cared little about others’ opinions of her. After her first surgery, she had a big stripe of hair shaved off of the left side of her head with a Frankenstein-esque surgical incision stitched in a wide C around her ear. She bounced back pretty quickly from the surgery, considering how invasive the procedure had been. She wanted to come with me to the store about a week after we got home from the hospital. When we went out, it was clear that people were staring, some out of fear, some out of curiosity, some out of disgust. Madi looked at me and said, “I know I should care that people are staring at my head wound, but then I think, “Hey, I just had brain surgery, I think I get a pass.” Madi knew that she was precious to Heavenly Father. And she respected the commandments he had given her. She followed them, not out of fear or because the people around her were obeying, but because she genuinely knew that they would make her happy in the end. Her integrity was admirable. We started listening to an audio book once that had gotten rave reviews. We were both really excited to hear it. Once we got about a chapter in, there were quite a few swear words. Madi interrupted the book and said, “Mom, I don’t want to listen to this anymore. There’s too much bad language in it.” Admittedly, I was disappointed. I probably would have continued to listen because it was a really good story (clearly she didn’t get this from me)! She felt like that about all media and would choose not to consume if it made her feel bad. She chose well not out of guilt, but because once she realized it would not uplift her, she sincerely lost the desire to do it. She had an innate understanding of who she was, that she was daughter of royalty, and she did not need to sink to the world’s level in order to find enjoyment. She respected who she was and always stayed true to it. When I asked her after her first surgery what it meant to be a child of God, she said she felt like it meant protection. That He would always watch out for her and take care of her. She had seen this physically with the surgery and cancer, but she also felt it spiritually, too. She knew how to access that power and stuck to those principles like glue.
Fourth legacy: Be tough, but pliable
When Madi was little, a friend of ours put together a little soccer clinic for our kids. On the first day of the clinic, one of the children made a mistake and started crying. One of Madi’s 5 year old friends, after giving a massive eye roll, looked at the kid and said, “What? There’s no crying in soccer!”
Madi embodied this sentiment. After going through two brain surgeries without a tear, I sat by her hospital bed half expecting her to look over at me and say, “What? Mom! There’s no crying in brain cancer!”
As a little girl on the playground, Madi would frequently trip or fall down. I think over the years, she ran in front of swings and got kicked over at least half a dozen times. Every time, the other mothers would gasp and look at me, then at her waiting for the maelstrom to ensue. But every time, little Madi would pop right back up and keep on running hardly even noticing that she’d suffered any kind of setback. She rarely cried from pain. She saved tears for the more important things like not being able to have ice cream or having to go to the bathroom. I remember marveling as a young mother at her strength. This year, if I have learned anything from Madi, it is that strength is a choice. I have gained incredible admiration and respect for her as I watched the patience, faith, and grace with which she dealt with these struggles. She has always been good at self-soothing, but this year was just breath-taking. She dealt with challenges that most people will never have to face and she did it with humor and courage. She trusted us – her parents and medical team - implicitly that we would choose the best options for her health. She accepted the hard things she had to do with faith, knowing that they would ultimately help her in the long-run. Recently, I was telling Madi a story of my grandfather whose feet had gotten frostbit and gangrene from being submerged in freezing rain in a foxhole during WWII. The doctors told him they would have to amputate his feet in the morning. It ended well, they didn’t have to amputate; but as we were telling her this story, Madi was apparently fading in and out of sleep, but snapped to attention when she heard us say that the doctors would have to amputate. She loudly said, “I can hear you, you know… I don’t want to hear about what the doctors are going to do to me.” She laughed in relief when she found out we were talking about my grandpa, not her. The sweetest thing to me was that she did not question why or what they were going to do. She did not even say, ‘why are they going to amputate my legs for brain cancer?” She just accepted that what Kurt and I were talking about was in her best interest. That faith is exactly how she trusted in Heavenly Father, too. She always knew that He was there, helping her, even though he didn’t take this trial away. We would often say in our prayers, “thank you for our trials, even though
we hate them.” And she truly exemplified the ability to submit peacefully to the will of God. That legacy – I hope- will live on through our other kids and our grandkids and rest heavily on the following generations long after we all are gone.
I would be willing to bet that Madi is here right now, basking in the warmth of people expressing love and admiration of her life and mission on earth. I recently posted on social media a picture of her before our lives turned upside down… before we knew I was pregnant with a baby who wouldn’t live. Before we knew about the ugly cancer that would ultimately take her life. I long to have that day back. I would hug her and cry and read with her and talk about life and friends and school. But then I think about the person I am now today after all that has transpired, the way our family has changed because of her, and I feel truly humbled at what she accomplished in her short life. I told my friends recently that I felt like Madi handed me a pair of glasses that suddenly brought the world into crisp focus… and then left. I am so sad that she is gone. I miss her more than I can possibly express. I am sad that she will miss all the milestones her friends will get to have here on earth. But I also think of her legacy of learning, creation, integrity, and strength, and I can’t imagine anyone having a better skill set to deal with what she had to endure. I feel inside that somehow there’s a purpose to this… that maybe she even chose this path before she came. I think maybe she knew what she would have to give up and was willing to do it, knowing it would have a happy ending. There is an Albus Dumbledore quote that we had displayed in her room- that she memorized at the end. It says, “Happiness can be found in the darkest of times if one only remembers to turn on the light.” Madi always just knew how to turn on the light. She deliberately chose to live in the light. We may not feel the happiness now, but I have seen from her example that it’s there if we choose deliberately to find it. And we will. I know we will. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Comments
Best, Rita Butzer Carpenter (mother of Leo)
Hugs,
Vivian