Makenzie – Forever 18

Birthday Cake Nose

I don’t remember where I read it and I don’t remember why.  But somewhere in my scanning of some random article, a mom was talking about her children – of which she bore three.  What caught my attention was how she listed the names and ages of her kids.  “Alex – 22, Molly – 24, Andrew – forever 18.”

Reading Andrew’s listing stirred up in me a Makenzie moment.  I paused.  Knowing what she meant and wondering the details of the back-story.  I wondered how he died and if he led a full life.

Today, ‘forever 18’ strikes me especially hard.  My Makenzie’s birthday.  She would have been 22 but is ‘forever 18’.  She would have been in college, maybe had a boyfriend and maybe would have come home to celebrate with us.  Lot’s of maybe’s, silenced by reality.  She doesn’t have any more birthday’s.  She is ‘forever 18.’

What I wouldn’t give to bake her a cake today.  What I wouldn’t do to see her play along with my old joke of putting re-lighting candles on it.  (She would always pretend to be surprised that the candles wouldn’t blow out – but she knew).  What I wouldn’t give to hug her bear-like, kiss her forehead and whisper “Happy Birthday, Kenz”  only to hear back “Thanks daddy.  I love you.”

Today as I sit in the quiet of my writing room, look up to see her pictured face and finger a bobby-pin found underneath my coffee mug, I am simply grateful that the “forever” in her “forever 18” is spent at the side of God.  He knows what He’s doing.  He has granted her a “forever” that is filled with joy. He has given her a life that is above any she experienced while with me.  He has graced her with a fullness that I too will know.  My Makenzie’s “forever” is with her Savior Jesus and I cannot be more grateful.

Happy Birthday, button-nose.  Forever-18.

Peace!

My Makenzie Drift

One of the most difficult experiences for those of us whose kids have died is to relate to our other “earth-walking” kids.  That’s what I’m ‘drifting’ about most recently.  Not that I wish they were like Makenzie or that they acted as the same, but I reactively want to talk to Makenzie about how awesome Nathan and Maddie are.  I wish I could see the three of them together again – laughing, fighting, goofing around.  I wish I could email Makenzie or text her to tell her about the latest song Nathan wrote or the cute boy about whom Maddie’s twitter-pated.  I wish that somehow I could get her a second cup of coffee at the Starbucks at which I’m now sitting.

It isn’t to be.  She won’t get to hear Nathan’s music or do girl-stuff with Maddie.  But She is sleeping in the arms of Jesus which, I suppose, is much grander an experience that dawdling with us.  For now, I just have my wishes and dreams that tend to drift me into a vacant gaze out a nearby window.

The chatter of two teenaged girls snap me back from my drift.  I like those drift-moments.  Some would say they’re daydreams.  Whatever.  They sit well with me because they remind me that there is more to my life than the urgency of the now.   There is “then” as well.  And sometimes, God brings my thoughts there so that I can have peace here - all riding on the wings of my Drift.

Peace!

Her Name is Makenzie

In the corner of a coffee shop, I frantically type out my blurry thoughts, trying to meet imposed deadlines for publication.  When writing, I usually enter another world and am able to block out the bustling sounds of the grinding coffee machine, chatter from patrons and the light jazzy style music that drips from the JBL speaker mounted in the corner over my head.  But not today.

A mom walks in with her friend, both being followed by two little 5-year-old-ish girls.  They take off toward the knee-high chalkboard in the “family-friendly” corner.  I notice them because the mom calls out the name of her daughter which simultaneously calls out my emotions and memories.

“Makenzie” she says.

I look up expecting to see my oldest daughter scampering across the tan tiles of the shop.  For a split second, I hope it to be true.  I hope it is her.  I hope the last years without her could be redone.  But God doesn’t work that way.  The reality of my Makenzie’s death sinks in again as a different little face turns and looks up at her mom.  You never really get over those “hits” of reality.  Some of you reading, know … you know.

So I pray for that young mom and her “Makenzie.”  I pray that the joy my daughter brought me would also be hers.  I pray that God’s plan for their lives doesn’t intersect with the same tragedy as did ours.  All in all, I succumb to the numb that I haven’t felt in quite some time and I sink back into my coffee shop corner.  Deadlines persist and I thank God for allowing me to hear her name again – “Makenzie.”

Peace!

LOSING A CHILD REWIRES MY BRAIN

I’m sitting at Starbucks on a drizzly early morning.  Normally, I’m at Caribou Coffee but nothing seems normal this morning.  Why?  Because my mind is connecting in strange ways today.  You see, when my oldest daughter was killed a few years back she was 18 years and 1 month old.  Too young to die.  Too energetic to have life cut short.

But back to my madness.  Today, my son is … you guessed it … 18 years and 1 month old.  I know.  You may think it’s a strange weaving – her timeline with his.  But that is how a person’s mind works when you lose a child.

In all of this, it reminds me again that our days are numbered, that our time is short, no matter if it’s 18 or 88 years.  And that the measuring of our prosperity is in our connection with God and the positive impact we have on others.

So today, as the clouds roll in and out, as the drizzle collects on the lawn and the world slows down, I will lean into the Lord and thank Him for the short years that He gives us all.

(Psalm 39)

Peace,

MY MAKENZIE’S ESPIRIT DE CORPS

Have you ever put off a project so long that it grew legs and took over?  That was my garage.  So finally, after a year, I decided to clean out the cobwebs and organize the bins that had all but grown roots in the concrete.  Bin after bin, I opened the lids and shuffled threw old tennis rackets and camping gear that had long since rusted out.  But then, I opened up a bin that flooded all my sense with memories.  It belonged to my daughter, Makenzie.

For those of you new to my blog, you may not know that my oldest daughter, Makenzie, was killed in a car accident a few years back.  (You can read her story here).  Anyway, seeing her ballet shoes, class notes and an a sundry of knickknacks that used to rest on her nightstand nearly broke me.  One of the items was a plaque she received after her first year at the Bay Area Houston Ballet Company.  It was the espirit de corps award.  Simply put, this award recognizes someone who exemplifies a positive common spirit of the company and who lives a life of excellence.

As I think back on Makenzie’s life, read her journals, and find her personal belongs in bins, I am reminded that a great person is not the sum of their possessions.  A great person is defined by the relational impact of their life.  Makenzie was such a person. She loved Jesus and that love reflected to all who met her.  She added value to those who felt worthless, joy to those living is sadness and laughter to those who wanted to cry.  Makenzie lived a life of espirit de corps.

Ultimately, Makenzie was a great person because she knew that her own value and worth came from Jesus.  She knew who she was and whose she was.  In her short 18 years of life, she impacted more people than most of us ever will in our lifetimes.  For those of us blessed to know her personally, we will never be the same.

Peace,

MAKENZIE TIME – HAS IT BEEN THAT LONG?

It’s a funny thing about anniversaries.  They mark significant events.  They call to mind moments of relevance.  Mostly good.  Some not.

Today’s anniversary is one I wish was not on my calendar.  It’s been three years now since Makenzie’s last sunset, her last phone call, her last text.  It’s been three years since Kellie and I frantically drove to the hospital to learn that our beautiful ballerina had been killed.  Three years since we, as a family, melted together in sorrow and wept at the foot of our Lord.  Has it been that long?

Time is a funny character.  It changes you and lets you be.  It catches up with us and doesn’t leave us alone.  In it’s ruthlessly redundant clutches, it does not give us itself to heal but chides from a few steps ahead to keep moving.  Such is the way the three years have gone.  While we have not wanted to leave that June 3rd date, Time has called us forward – not changing the ache, but diminishing the pain.  I love what my mother wrote us a few days back:

“They are  wrong….Time does not heal….it just helps you to live with the loss.”

So if that is the gift that Time has given, so be it.  However, I can still hear her voice in the ears of my soul.  I can still see her skipping with the eyes of my heart.  And I so desperately want my eternal eternity to be here so that all of us can dance again, together.  By God’s Grace in Jesus, I will do that.  And then, Time will have no power and will have simply … stopped.

But until then – sleep well, my dearest Makenzie.  sleep well.

Peace!

(CLICK HERE FOR TWO BOOKS ABOUT MAKENZIE AND HER IMPACT)

(or HERE FOR MAKENZIE’S CELEBRATION OF LIFE SERVICE)

Makenzie in My Dreams

It’s been nearly three years since my oldest daughter, Makenzie died in a car accident.  Since then, our family has been on a journey marked by recovery, struggle, joy, sadness, questions and pain.  Pain – there’s been plenty of that.  But what has been lacking in our movement forward are dreams.  In my vulnerability, I pray for dreams about her.  Last night, God gave me one. Here’s what I remember:

Our family was at a party – no, a carnival.  There were kiddie rides, food booths and street performers and the smell of cotton candy permeated the cool, late afternoon air.  In the dream, I knew that she died, that she was allowed a few hours with us and that at the close of the carnival, she would be heading back to heaven.  We walked together, once again, as a family.  We talked, played some games and ate hotdogs smothered in mustard.

Makenzie’s snorty laugh rang in my ears as she skipped and told jokes with my son Nathan and my younger daughter Maddie.  I took her hand and we strolled together past a juggler.  She was fascinated  by the performer’s finesse.  I remember sitting down with her on a bench and asking her questions.  “What is heaven like?”  “What do you remember at and immediately after the accident?”  “Does Jesus play guitar?”  (I don’t know why I asked that but I did).  She simply smiled and snuggled deep into my chest as she used to.

My last vivid memory of the dream was our family, once again, walking through the carnival toward the exit that led to an open field.  Makenzie grabbed Maddie’s hand and the two of them skipped ahead, made a circle and jumped around like two tea-party little girls playing “Ring around the Rosie.”

It was beautiful.  It was lovingly simple and complete.  Yet, the dream seared.  I didn’t want her to go back.  I woke up this morning with the feeling of desperation that I haven’t felt since June, July and August of 2009.

So there it is, oh ye interpreters of dreams.  A look into my sad madness and a walk through the carnival of my dream.

Peace,

Happy Birthday to You!

Today is Makenzie’s birthday.  (If I’d forgotten, her friends’ posts on Facebook would’ve reminded me – Thank you).

I think back to Makenzie’s last birthday and thought that my daughter was weird.  We asked her if she wanted to have a party to celebrate her 18th birthday.  We asked her if she wanted to “do it up grand” but instead, all she wanted was to be with Kellie, Nathan, Maddie, Grandpa, Grandma and me.  Didn’t matter what we did.  Didn’t matter where we went.  She simply wanted to be with the people who loved her most.  Weird.

So we packed up a picnic and headed to the beach; just the seven of us; the perfect number to celebrate a perfect day.  Fighting the salted-infused breeze, we lit the candles, slaughtered THE SONG, and munched on a Sam’s Club, hand crafted, glazed lemon cake.  Simple.  Beautiful.  Holy.  Weird.

Today, we don’t have any candles; no cake or picnic.  We didn’t wake up, pull out our family’s Celebration Plate on which would be her birthday breakfast.  We didn’t sneak up to her room, jump on her bed and wake her up by yelling “Happy Birthday!”  All we have this year are the well wishes of her dear friends and family, the memory of birthday’s past and the pictures that support them.

But for us, that is enough.  Because for 18 years, we raised the amazing girl whom God entrusted to us.  A girl who loved her Maker.  A girl who changed our lives.  A girl who, by being beautifully different, was wonderfully weird.

Happy Birthday, my dearest princess.

Peace,

“The Newness of Christmas”

This morning, a fresh, new blanket of snow gently covers the old.  Like the top of a cake, the snow is frosted on the arms of the bare trees outside my window.  The indentations of rabbit tracks are barely visible now as the sky’s powder dusts over them.

It is quiet.  It is still.   Everything is new.

Thats what I love about Christmas.  It makes things new.  As a kid, there was the newness  of toys, foods and oder-eaters (yes, I got those for Christmas during my transitory adole-scent years).  As an young adult, there was the newness of events, parties and friends.  As an adult, there was the newness of family, promises and dreams.

“All things new,” the Good Book says.  Time is new this morning; Mercy is new this morning; Love, Joy, Hope.  All of it – New.

What is new to you this Christmas?  As dark becomes light, as sleep becomes ‘wake, as rest becomes work, what has the new snow covered in you?

Christmas reminds me of the new.  And the journey of its discovery is what gives me peace.

“Wish You Were Here”

Post cards sport the phrase, “Miss You – Wish You Were Here.”  The “Miss You” looks to yesterday — the “Wish You Were Here” looks to today.  The former is in the past… the latter is in the present.  And so it goes with my ache.

I don’t miss Makenzie so much anymore.  Shocking for you to read.  Healthy for me to write.  Obviously, I could intentionally wallow in empty spot at our table or the loss of all that joy, but today I am relegated to wishing she were here.

I wish Makenzie was here to see how beautiful and fun her younger sister has become.  I wish Makenzie was around to hear her brother’s “voice” in and through his music.  I wish she was here to see how close her mom and dad have become;  to witness the leaves change, to take long walks with me,  to meet the incredible people that have followed her story and to experience the countless other events that have made our lives beautiful.

All in all, I wish others could meet her  and experience a young woman who knew her centering was in Jesus.

(Wish You Were Here, button-nose.)

Peace,

todd

Life Changing Links …

• Tribute Video played at Makenzie’s Celebration Service.
• Makenzie’s Celebration Service Online – Click Here
• “I Dance For You My King” (Video: Makenzie’s song by Anthony Celia)
• “Image of Grace” (Video: Song written and played by Nathan Stocker)
• “Makenzie Memories” (a blog by one of her best friends, Katie Davis)