Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss & Love by Matthew Logelin Page A

after Liz died, my phone didn’t stop ringing, and the red light on my BlackBerry blinked almost constantly. Of course, the great thing about the Internet is that word travels fast, which meant my support system was suddenly enormous and stretched across the globe. I heard from high school friends I hadn’t spoken to in twelve years telling me they remembered meeting Liz once and how they never forgot her smile. My friends from college contacted me, all shocked, in disbelief that someone as lively and vivacious as Liz could be dead. Biraj called from South Korea in tears, unable to say anything. My graduate school roommate listened to me cry into the phone for at least thirty minutes. Family members I hadn’t heard from since the previous Christmas called to share memories of Liz. I heard from colleagues and friends in India and the Philippines, most of whom had never met Liz, calling and writing to tell me that they remembered the way my face lit up when I talked about her.
    Standing outside the hospital, the sunshine of a beautiful Southern California morning unable to divert my attention from the darkest moment of my life, I talked on the phone to one of my oldest friends, Alex. I’d known Alex since he was the new kid in our third-grade classroom. We had the low-maintenance kind of friendship that was sustained by a call or an e-mail once or twice a year. I hadn’t even gotten around to telling him that Liz was pregnant, so I was more than surprised to hear from him. He told me that he was away on business, but that he would catch a flight to Los Angeles as soon as he possibly could. I hadn’t even considered that my friends from out of town would come to Liz’s funeral. “I’m not even sure when or where the funeral is going to be, but I guess on Saturday? That’s the day that funerals usually happen, right?” Neither of us really knew; we were too young to have ever thought about such things. Well, at least Alex was. I had aged over forty years in fewer than twenty-four hours.
    As we continued to talk, a taxi pulled into the driveway of the hospital, stopping right in front of me. The door opened, and there was my best friend, A.J., and his wife, Sonja. I hung up with Alex and started crying all over again. They had been on a ski vacation in Colorado with A.J.’s family, and I hadn’t spoken to them since Madeline’s birth. I hadn’t expected people to show up, but if anyone was going to, it would be A.J. and Sonja. I had gone to high school with both of them, and they were one of the few couples Liz and I knew who had been together longer than we had. I was in their wedding, and A.J. was in ours. They were the kind of couple other couples envied but didn’t hate. And they were by far the nicest, kindest human beings in the world.
    One night in the hospital, Liz had said to me, “I know we agreed that we don’t want to baptize Madeline, but I really like the idea of her having godparents. Can A.J. and Sonja be Madeline’s ‘not-godparents’? You know, in case we die in a car crash or something, I’d want them to take care of Madeline.” I thought about this conversation as I reached out to A.J., hugging him for what would normally have been an uncomfortable amount of time, weeping into his black fleece ski vest.
    “What are you guys doing here?” I said, asking the dumbest question of the day. “You’re supposed to be on vacation!” I needed them, and they knew it, so they came to me as fast as they could, even though I hadn’t asked them to do so. I wiped the tears from my eyes, threw my arm around A.J.’s shoulder and said, “Come on. Let’s go see the most goddamn beautiful baby in the world.”
    This scene played out multiple times over the next few days. Liz’s sister, Deb, flew in from San Francisco, and her expression was something I hope I never see again. My dad and his wife came from their vacation in Florida, both still thinking that this was some awful joke we were playing on