I See the Light

Madeline LOVED movies. She had a serious screen addiction that I knew we would have to break someday. While in the hospital, we tried to keep it to one movie a day, up from our regular one movie a week, cause at the hospital there were no siblings, no friends, limited toys, and no going outside. What's a toddler to do? So every evening, after day rolled his computer back down the hall to her room, we'd pick a movie. (No wait Daddy!) There were movies from home, movies from the hospital library, movies available on their OneView system. Madeline didn't care much what we watched as long as we watched something, but there were ones she'd ask for more, and ones she'd pay attention to longer. She seemed to prefer movies with songs and animated movies.

The brief time she was at home, she'd ask for every movie she could think of. "Watch Tangled? Watch Encanto? Watch Frozen? Watch Avatar? Which one? Watch movie?"

I liked Encanto and Coco since they were bright with fun animations and music. She liked those and Tangled and Frozen. David does not like Frozen, but out of all of those, he preferred Tangled. So while we did try and switch it up, the old favorites came back around.

Actually, when I was with her in the PICU, I'd put Encanto on just for normalcy, because it reminded me of her.

But Tangled became Madeline like butterflies were Madeline. Courtney, Melissa's friend who's good with art, drew a little Rapunzel picture that said "Hello There" cleverly colored with Melissa's limited selection of highlighters. Child Life gave her a Rapunzel baby doll. We had these Disney books we'd read and an illustration of Rapunzel in one of them. She'd always point to the picture, then over at her toy box. "My 'Punzel? My 'Punzel?" She picked a Rapunzel LEGO set from the Ronald McDonald house toy closet. And of course, we watched Tangled a lot.

That said, nobody told us about this next bit until it happened. David's step-brother, Andy, just got married on July 2nd. It was getting late and we knew it was going to be well after 10 by the time we made the 1+ hour drive home, so once supper was over, we made the choice to skip dancing, and were making the girls use the restroom when we were called back. "There's something you have to be here for, something super important!"

Wayne (David's step-dad) took my hand and led me back around to the party, then to the fields near where the ceremony happened. I heard the DJ announce. "This is for Madeline." "I See the Light" from Tangled starts playing, you know, the scene where they're together on the boat lighting the lanterns. Andy and Kyra join us and they're pulling out and lighting these big paper lanterns to release into the darkened sky under the swollen moon and over the rolling fields.

I had held it together before this pretty well, but it all broke down then. It was a beautiful moment and I'm so thankful for how they honored Madeline.

She would have loved it.