"The Day Maddie Died”

Spring break is over. The cool, Michigan air smells fresh with damp dirt and rain. The warm, new sun casts its glow on the muddy playgrounds, it feels not yet hot but rather welcoming. For those outside Jayno Adams, this fragrant energy continued. For the children and adults within the school, the air was stagnant. Stinking in every corner of every room. The classrooms stank, the office stank, even the playground stank. The air reeked with grief. The grief from about 500 students, staff and teachers. The grieving for Madison Edens.

I remember Maddie. She was a happy-go-lucky girl who enjoyed everything in life. She was springy and optimistic. Her personality was accentuated by her freckle covered face, her eyes partially hidden by a mop of long, red curls. She was in the grade below me, my sister’s friend. My sister met her in Ms. Hagan’s kindergarten class at Jayno Adams Elementary. Together they listened to stories, swung on rusty swings at recess, colored crayon drawings and built big, towers of blocks. My memory of her has faded, so I can currently recall only but vague facts about a girl I was once proudly called friend. She was in girl scouts. She liked to swim but was bad at it. She loved Hannah Montana.

I remember the day I learned of Maddie's death. It was a few days after the end of spring break. It was evening, around dinner time. My mom sat me and my sister down in our basement. I remember she called us out from the toy room. I remember Laney and I sitting cross-legged with my mom on the floor, encased in the pinkish light of my basement. My mom looked at her then kindergartener and 1st grader. My sister and I looked back, confused about the worried look on her face. We tried to prepare ourselves for some type of bad news. Maybe our car broke. Maybe grandma was sick.  My mom took a deep breath. How do you tell your six and seven-year-old kids that their friend is dead? My mom stared at us and awkwardly blurted out “I don’t know how to tell you guys this, but Maddie died. I’m so sorry.” My mom became red and teared up. Immediately, my sister was overcome with emotions and she burst into a full sob. I didn’t cry at all but instead sat frozen, unsure how to react. I was more concerned with my sister, I became upset because she was upset. For Laney, the loss hit as soon as she was told, as someone shot her with a rifle. For me, it took a few days for the death to even register in my head, the reality slowly seeping in. At seven years old, it never occurred to me that kids could die. I knew about death. I’ve heard of people dying before, but it only happened to grown-ups, old people. It clearly never happened to children, and definitely not to kids like me.

After that, the rest remains somewhat of a blur. I remember school telling us something about it. We gathered at the carpet while the teachers attempted the tough task of trying to communicate death to a bunch of 1st graders and kindergartners. They told us she died of the flu. I remember how they planted a tree in front of my school to honor her. We made a chest of things to give to her mom. We did things to make Maddie’s death seem less awful. Things to make it appear less traumatic to the children forced to endure it. We pretended that everything was normal, that the air still smelled damp and clean and that the sun still felt warm and inviting. The truth was it didn’t. I look back on this moment as the first time I actually had to experience death. We had accepted it in our school and in our heads and so life went on. We moved on to new topics in class, new subjects in conversations. The cloud Maddie’s death held over us seemed to slowly disintegrate.

I look back on Maddie with appreciation. Navigating the journey of her death was difficult, but it was something I needed to do. Maddie’s death was one of the first times in my life that I can remember where I felt completely powerless. She taught me that sometimes in life things just...happen. This random tragedy bonded me with people whom to this day I have nothing else in common with, it opened my eyes to a community and support group that I didn’t know I had. Overall, I am grateful that I got to know Maddie in her 5 years of being on this earth.