Thank You

I have struggled to figure out how to write a thank you that feels big enough for what all of you did for our family.

I don’t think there is one.

When this all began, we were facing the unimaginable. We knew we were going to lose Maddy, but we didn’t know exactly when. We were trying to make the most of whatever time we had left with her while also preparing for a reality no parent should ever have to prepare for.

And then all of you showed up.

You gave. You shared her story. You prayed for her. You sent messages. You brought food, flowers, gifts, and acts of kindness. Some of you knew and loved Maddy personally. Some of you knew me. And some of you had never met either of us and simply read about this extraordinary little girl and decided that our family should not have to walk through this alone.

Because of your generosity, I was able to spend Maddy’s final days focused on being her mom. And after she died, you helped give us the ability to honor her the way she deserved, to say goodbye to her without every decision being accompanied by the question of how we were going to afford it.

There is an enormous difference between being able to pay for something and being carried through it. You carried us.

I wish more than anything that this had ended differently. I wish I were writing to tell you that Maddy got better. I wish I were still posting pictures of her dancing, heading to school with the pink and purple backpack she wanted, playing with her dolls, or yelling “Mom, how dare you” at me over something ridiculous.

Instead, I write this having laid my four-year-old daughter to rest.

But I write it with an overwhelming amount of gratitude.

Maddy was loved so much more widely than I ever realized. In the worst weeks of our lives, we were surrounded by evidence of that love over and over again. I will never forget it.

The help came from every corner and every era of my life at once. Our families carried us while carrying their own grief for her. People I worked with long ago and people I work with now. Friends I have known since I was a child. People who know me only through someone else, a coworker, a friend of a friend, someone a relative happened to mention it to. People who had every reason to decide this was not theirs to carry, and who carried it anyway.

There are people whose names are on this page, and people whose names I will never know. People who gave hundreds or thousands of dollars, and people who gave $25 or $50 because that was what they could give. People who couldn’t give money but shared her story, prayed a rosary, sent a message, or simply stopped for a moment and cared about a little girl they had never met.

Thank you for loving my Maddy.

Thank you for helping me take care of her while she was here.

Thank you for helping me honor her when she left.

Thank you for helping our family survive something I still don’t quite know how to survive.

My heart is broken beyond words. It is also profoundly grateful for every person who helped carry us through.

Maddy deserved a whole lifetime.

Thank you for helping make the lifetime she did have so deeply, extraordinarily loved.