Five Months

April 20, 2013

Dear Madie,
Time.... I remember on many walks us discussing how time was flying by, or counting hours or days like an awaited event would never happen... My relationship to time is warped in a way I couldn't have imagined. Where memories have become something that are clung to, treasured. Time ceases to have measured meaning.
Has it really only been five months ago that my heart stopped beating, my adrenal glands went into overdrive, and my world became fluid? It feels like a different existence, and yet I can recall with clarity ever nuance of the frames of time of Nov. 20,2012. I remember the morning with preciseness, every detail leading up to the officer at our door... The piano lesson I taught, the conversation I was having with MarShae, the room I was going to finish painting that day....
I remember the smell of cigarettes on the officer's breath, the things he said, the trauma of my world spinning uncontrollably around me. I remember Marshae holding me telling me it was alright when my head was screaming that I couldn't be awake that this couldn't be, because you were suppose to have just left that morning... how could you be lying in a morgue in the same place your grandparents had been take for their burial? A place hours away from your dorm that you had only been to as a baby? How could Taylor be near death on his way to Las Vegas. So much didn't add up... My brain couldn't process the implications of what this meant...
I remember each of the phone calls... first to your father, than your siblings, then to Sawyer's mother, then to Mitzi and Christa... In a warping of time I soon had people coming from everywhere... helping, crying, holding me up, following me around trying to get me to drink water, that got stuck in my throat... I remember talking to Bailee, then to Taylor... I remember talking to Rachelle, the decision for her to fly to Las Vegas to be with Taylor....I remember that Marielle was across the street playing and I didn't want her to come home cause I didn't want her world to collapse, I wanted her to have a few more hours of innocence... I remember Sterling and Kathy arriving and thinking this is the worst birthday ever...How could I bring a child into the world on the same day a child left the world? I remember Ryan and Klara arriving, and the grand kids playing, their world still innocent... Everything about being a mother was construed, altered, floating,...
I remember Sawyer arriving, of knowing that his entire world had also just collapsed around him...
I remember that I needed a shower but didn't want to shower, because it meant I wasn't dreaming... I remember that Thanksgiving and Christmas suddenly didn't matter... nothing had meaning...
Everything in the passage of time has been altered...New ground has to be established. this is by far the hardest part right now..I feel like I am trying to drive on roads that are covered in black ice... no traction, no stability, because everything is evolving..
This week as so much has happened, I again find myself unable to process time. Tommy Tunes, felt like yesterday we were there with you and MarShae... yet One Direction that we discovered at the same time last year seemed like forever ago... So many tragedies that I didn't follow because I could only think of the many lives that were in their own warping of time...
Now this morning I looked through some photos and found this picture of you, in "your" white dress, and it felt like the beautiful spring morning outside beckoning me to soak up the beauty of nature, to remember you are in the beauty around me, saying hello... Remember the lessons you have taught me as your mother both in life, and in death...Clinging to the things I know. I know I will be with you again. I know that God is our Heavenly Father and that you are with him now. I know that Jesus Christ is my personal savior and atoned for every tear, anguish of heart that I have and will go through... I know that he broke the bands of death and that even though I am in my Friday of time that the glorious Sunday will come, when we will be reunited, and joy will fill my heart...
Until then stay close, help us get through this, and know that I will always remember what a rose really stands for... "you" Timeless beauty in every way...

Mount Karmel, Kane Co.

via kls.com November 26, 2012

MOUNT CARMEL, Kane County — A BYU student was killed and another was injured in a traffic accident last week.

Utah Highway Patrol Cpl. Todd Johnson said three people were traveling on U.S. 89 in Kane County on Nov. 20 about 6:30 a.m. when the driver apparently fell asleep and the car went off the road near Mount Carmel.

The vehicle flew off the embankment, did a "nose dive" into the ground and landed on its hood, he said.

The passenger in the backseat, Madeline Morris, 18, of Spring, Texas, was killed. The driver, her brother Taylor Morris, 23, also of Spring, Texas, suffered serious injuries and was taken to a nearby hospital, Johnson said. A 24-year-old woman from Arizona in the front passenger seat was not injured.

An assistance fund has been set up to help the family cover funeral costs and mounting medical bills.CLICK HERE to donate.

Beautiful Inside and Out

 SPRING, Texas — At the bottom of the bulletin board in Madeline Morris' bedroom hangs a quote by Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin, a former member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "Kindness is the essence of greatness," it reads, and it was by those words that Madie lived her life.

The 18-year-old student at Brigham Young University was traveling with her brother and his fiance to spend Thanksgiving in Arizona when a tragic accident cut her life short: just before dawn, her brother, Taylor Morris, 23, fell asleep. The car went off the road near Mount Carmel.

The car landed upside down, but Taylor's fiancee, Bailee Brinkerhoff, was able to get out of the car and reach her cell phone to call for help. She propped Taylor up to drain the blood from his lungs while they waited for paramedics to arrive. Madie was killed instantly.

The group had not planned to leave that night — instead, they were going to wait for the morning — but Bailee and Taylor had gotten engaged the night of Nov. 19 and the trio could not wait to share the news with Bailee's family in Arizona. Their adrenaline carried them through most of the night, but after that morning, Taylor blamed himself for what had happened.

"His initial reaction was, ‘It's all my fault,'" according to Rachelle Morris, Taylor and Madie's sister. "Our mom told him he was never allowed to say that again. He said, ‘I just have to recognize the Lord saved me, and Madie was killed instantly. I have to recognize it was an accident. Now I just need to live my life in a way that embodies the spirit of Madie.'"

Greatness in the form of kindness — that was Madie's legacy. The family has received hundreds of notes from people who were touched by her kind words and sunny outlook. "Her smile and laugh was contagious,'" read one letter from a classmate at BYU. "She truly struck me as incredibly friendly and fun to be around," read another.

"She had a bright personality," "I admire her inner and outer beauty," "She was a wonderful person to be around." "She was a great light in the lives of all those who she met." Every letter said the same thing, according to Rachelle Morris: Madie went out of her way to say hi; her smile was effortless, genuine and beautiful.

Assistance fund:

An assistance fund has been set up to help the family cover funeral costs and mounting medical bills. Click here to donate.*

Morris said Madie was preparing to serve a mission for the LDS church. She, along with her three roommates, had made the decision afterPres. Thomas S. Monson announced in Octoberthat women could serve beginning at age 19, instead of 21.

After Pres. Monson made the announcement, Morris text messaged Madie to see if she had received an answer to her prayers about whether she should go. "YES!!!!!!!!!!" was the response. And as the two sisters stood in the Conference Center later that weekend, singing "Called to Serve," Morris put her arm around Madie's shoulders.

"It was one of the proudest sister moments you could have," she said.

Madie's bishop in her ward at BYU later wrote a letter to the Morris family, explaining that the two had discussed her serving a mission and how he admired the young woman's kindness, generosity and spirit. "He said the great thing was it was never fake," Morris said.

She doesn't know where Madie got the quote on her bulletin board that came to mean so much — "probably at Young Women's," she said — but the words embody her sister's spirit.

"She was great because she was so kind," she said. "Yes, she did well academically, and she was gorgeous, but she had to work so hard at being successful. She never let it get to her head."

Morris told stories of the sacrifices Madie made to be successful in school — how she worked so hard to be successful where perhaps other people would have accepted defeat. It started in third grade, after Madie had been testing in the bottom quartile in reading for three years. "She realized she was not really a successful student, and she committed to becoming one of the ‘smart kids,'" Morris said.

By the end of fourth grade, Madie was reading at her grade level, and by the end of fifth grade, she was testing into middle school honors classes. And the same thing happened when she took the ACT: not happy with a low score the first two times she took the test, she studied for three months to get her score to where it needed to be for BYU.

"She established early on a foundation of hard work, patience, and dedication to excellence," Morris said. She said Madie realized she was never going to be the smartest kid in her class, but she could be the hardest working — and that was what was most remarkable about her success.

"I will miss her more than I will miss anyone or anything," Morris said. "There is no doubt in my mind what kind of person she was or what she is doing on the other side."