One never forgets what they are eating, the weather, or what was on television the moment their world crumbles. These details become instantly etched, defining the moment, and feelings toward those external items are forever changed. Some events in life have the power to instantly change the soul’s personality and path, defining both forever, known forever, at least in their own eyes, as the person whose mother died of breast cancer at five or whose father killed someone while drunk driving at twelve. I am the fifteen-year-old girl whose cousin who was more like a sister or her own child died eight days shy of two years old.
I was on the verge of a breakdown; the kind of breakdown that comes when all friends and all hope seem lost. She was the only remaining bright spot in my early teen life. When I spent the bulk of my nights crying myself into early a.m. sleep, Katie was my first bright thought when morning sun woke me too early. I was comforted by the notion the world spun for a freely grinning brown-haired angel and that made the dark days and the storms that stole my youth worth enduring.
At thirteen, I could not even imagine what hell I would endure in the following few years of my life. I was an awkward, soft-spoken new eighth grader with few friends and no talents other than excelling in school when Katie was born. I spent an unusually warm Sunday, September 13, 1987 with my mom and my aunt browsing the downtown shops in our town in an effort to induce labor of my aunt’s third child. We mused ordinarily about the baby to come, whether it would be a boy or girl, what its name might be, and what it would look like. These questions were answered by 8:15 that evening when my mom called me at our mobile home where I had anxiously been waiting to advise my new baby cousin was a girl named Katie Lea with a head of black hair and big feet.
My first sight of Katie was that of immediate connection. She lay peacefully sleeping in her clear plastic hospital basinet, her hair a mass of wild black peeking out from the pink receiving blanket swaddling her tiny body. Katie’s homecoming was exciting, full of pictures of her with everyone who visited. She wore mint green pajamas with tiny white polka dots and when she was not sleeping, her dark eyes investigated her blurry new world. I held Katie the first two of many long hours, content with her nestled in my arms, watching her sleep, and listening to her soft baby-sighs. On Katie’s one week birthday, my aunt called my mom frantic, wondering how to wash a baby’s hair as her other two daughters had been bald. My mom and I responded quickly, rushing to my aunt’s where my mom gave my aunt a much needed break by bathing Katie and washing her hair. We combed Katie’s hair down flat and pretty but her hair, like Katie, refused to be restrained. By the time we got Katie dressed, her hair had dried, fluffed and stuck straight up all over her head resembling a tiny clown in her rainbow colored polka-dotted pajamas.
My mom and I visited Katie at least weekly. I held her, fed her when she awoke, patted her back gently to burp her, rocked her back to sleep and as she became more aware, spoke to her to get her to smile. When the sun began to set and it was time to return home, I was still holding Katie. I relished in Katie. I enjoyed and protected her as if she were my own child. Whenever I was with Katie, I took over her care. When nobody else could calm her or make her happy, I could. She lit up when she saw me, running to me with her arms above her head and her hands waving for me to pick her up.
Katie was independent and never failed to make me laugh. She would tease, peeking from behind the corner where she was hiding and grinning after sneaking out of bed. Her twinkling eyes and grin immediately dissipated any twinge of frustration that may have been building. I had never seen a baby’s life unfold from its first day and I watched in amazement as Katie grew. I spent every moment I could with her, immediately agreeing to baby sit her any time my aunt asked. I watched her once for five days and got a realistic taste of motherhood; it was hectic but when Katie’s smile greeted me first thing in the morning, it was all worth it.
Katie was the only person I had ever dared to love and give to without limits. She was like my baby sister, I thought she would never leave me or hurt me because she was a baby who loved unconditionally, and I didn’t doubt she loved me as much as I loved her. At that time in my life, this meant everything to me. As an early teenager, I was prone to crushes and did not understand the minds of boys my age. I fell hard and proclaimed my affections openly and honestly which scared the boys I loved causing them to be mean to me so as to protect their reputations with their equally immature friends. Be it circumstance or raging hormones, I developed the notion I was fat, ugly and unworthy of affection. I spent many hours alone in my bedroom with my door closed lost in an elaborate daydream of the boy I liked finally realizing his love for me. When school was out for the summer and I could no longer bury myself in my school work, I focused on Katie. I continued to spend much of every weekend with her watching her grow and playing with her. I isolated myself emotionally from everything but Katie. I thought that life could get no worse.
It was one of the first few days of my sophomore year of high school, unusually warm and humid for 4:00 p.m. on an early September Tuesday. Katie’s second birthday was in eight days on September 13th. I was beginning the early throes of a crush on a new boy in my class, daydreaming about him in my bedroom in the middle of our double-wide trailer recording a remake of “Open Arms” from a 45 record onto a cassette tape when I heard the telephone ring through our cardboard-thin walls. I thought nothing of it at first assuming it was my grandmother’s daily call. But when I heard heavy hurried footsteps, panic seized me. My brother knocked but did not wait for my invitation before he swung the door open and said, panting, “Something bad happened. You have to finish cooking supper”.
I jumped from my bed and pushed the power button on my mini stereo. The song droned out in low distorted voices. I hurried to the kitchen. My mom shook as she attempted to tie her shoes. She said “Katie was hit by a car. I have to go to the hospital. Finish cooking supper.”
“What?” I stammered.
“I don’t know. That was Kathy. She just said she was hit by a car by Payless Shoes and it was bad.”
I watched the screen door close behind my mom’s back. My tears fell into the pan cooking Tuna Helper Au Gratin dinner as I stirred aimlessly. A voice in my head growled, “She’s dead” but I commanded it away and consoled myself. I told myself she could still be okay, I didn’t know what happened, and maybe the car just bumped Katie. I argued with myself asserting maybe Katie was just in a coma or broke her leg but negatively retorted she is so small and cars so big that she could not be anything but dead.
I finished cooking dinner and served it with buttered white bread to my brother and me. I choked down three small tear laden bites before the phone rang. I jumped, startled by the shrill ring. I dreaded answering but timidly picked up the receiver, held it to my ear and whispered, “Hello”.
“She’s gone.” I thought I had heard my mom wrong but before I could ask, she said, “She didn’t make it.”
I yelled, “No” and cried with my mom through the telephone line. I relayed the message to my brother’s blank face. I placed the telephone receiver back on the wall. With a knife twisting in my chest and my stomach constricting I ran down the long hallway of our mobile home to the bathroom and vomited into the toilet. I crumbled to the bathroom floor, clutched my stomach and cried. The trap door had slid from under my feet and I flailed in the emptiness, unable to fathom the horror.
Within a few hours, I learned my aunt walked to a friend’s house with Katie and Katie’s seven year old sister after receiving an impromptu dinner invitation. My aunt pushed Katie who was strapped in her stroller. They reached the intersection of a busy street, pushed the street light button and waited for the walk signal. They stepped out into the intersection and an unlicensed sixteen year old girl riding with her friends in a car with no brakes they stole off cinder blocks swerved around the cars stopped at the red light and struck Katie’s stroller. My aunt tried to hang on to the stroller as it was snatched from her hand and drug under the car. They could do nothing but watch as Katie’s head bounced on the pavement and the car tire traversed her tiny back causing the massive head injuries which had stolen her life by the time the car stopped several yards away.
The next morning my family gathered at my grandparents’ house. Most of the day I sat staring, unable to think of anything but Katie, and screaming to myself, “Why Katie? I loved her with my life!”
The funeral director arrived early; he sat at my grandma’s kitchen table with my grandma, Katie’s mother, and Katie’s father. I stood on the other side of the kitchen peninsula next to my mom who stood next to another aunt. Immediately after the door closed behind the funeral director, the arrangements set, my grandfather broke. The house fell silent; we listened to his agony. My stomach sickened and my throat closed. He repeated “Why Katie? Why not me? I am an old man. She was a baby. It should have been me.” I looked at my mom who held a tissue to her mouth and nose and at my aunt standing at her side. Heavy tears rolled down my aunt’s foundation smeared cheeks, dropped from her jaw and pooled on my grandparents’ gold-flecked kitchen countertop. We stood, crying silently, while we waited for my grandpa to resign himself to the fact that we could not answer his questions and he could not take Katie’s place.
I replayed Katie’s entire life in my imagination, wanting to preserve every second in my memory. The last time I saw Katie alive was Labor Day. Katie and her older sister took an evening bath together; Katie laughed delighted as her sister held her and they slid back and forth on the drained but still wet bathtub. After Katie’s bath, she took her towel to my mom so my mom could dry her then she brought her clothes to me so I could dress her. My mom kissed Katie goodbye when we left that evening but I didn’t; I thought I would get my kiss next time.
At the funeral visitation, when the drapes hiding Katie’s casket were drawn open like stage curtains, my mom and I held onto each other and prevented each other from sinking to the red-wine carpeted floor. Katie lay in the casket in the clothes I picked out with my aunt and grandma, a white dotted lavender jumpsuit, a white blouse, lavender puppy earrings and saddle shoes. For the first time, her hair was tame. It laid flat, lifeless and brownish red, tinted from her blood. The little girl who never sat still lay too still, more still even than when she slept. The scrapes on her face were visible though the funeral home tried to cover them with thick stage makeup. Her skin was cold and rubbery like a baby doll. I stationed myself next to Katie’s casket, refusing to provide the other mourners privacy in their grief. I had spent every family gathering over the past nearly two years following Katie, keeping her out of trouble and watching over her like a protective mother and I didn’t want to leave her side during that family gathering either.
The weather of September 8, 1989, dark and dreary, fit the day. The funeral service and burial passed quickly. I returned with my mom and brother to our trailer, left with a gaping oozing wound I thought could never heal. I thought life could not possibly continue and was not sure I wanted it to.
To my amazement and dismay, the sun still woke me the next morning after a fitful night. I sank still further into myself, writing, walking and studying. In the minutes and days that followed, every moment became a choice to live or to die. Every moment I sat on the pier with the Mississippi River rolling past, peering into midnight ink long after the sun had set and darkness shrouded the shore, I made the choice of standing up and returning home. Every morning, I made the choice of letting hot showers rush over my changing body. I made the choice to live simply because I knew what life was, despite the misery and elusive peace. I did not know, for sure, what might be on the other side of death, whether it be Katie, God or eternal darkness. With life I had choices, some control, no matter how miniscule, over what my life could be. As I walked the streets of my river town every night; as I watched the river journey home; and as I saw hatred devour my aunt, a peace began to grow within me and somewhere I found the strength to carry on. Somehow I learned life, no matter how short it is, is valuable and all we will have of life in the end is what we make of it. If two years of life could bring so much joy, vitality and grace, I marveled at what my life could become with all the years that likely lay ahead of me. Even if my life is snuffed out way before my loved ones thought it should be, I knew I could try to do the best I could with it. I knew death would wait for me and would be the same whether I met it tomorrow or in eighty years. I chose to keep filling my lungs and allow my heart to pump. I chose life.
