Honoring Molly (17 Years)

Dear Molly,

Today is your “Golden Birthday” and the 17th anniversary of your death.

I baked a cake last night for us to begin enjoying on your birthday eve, as today will be a busy one for our family. I grabbed a bag of miscellaneous extra candles from a kitchen cabinet to decorate it and couldn’t believe that we had exactly 17 left to light for you!

I wonder what 17 might be like for you.

What would be your favorite subjects in school and/or extracurricular interests?

As a junior/11th grader you could be looking at universities and/or considering other possibilities for life after high school, such as working, community college, a gap year and/or a year of service.

When I was 17, in 1992, I was performing with the Esande dance company and playing on the golf team at Evanston Township High School (ETHS), active with faith based Christian youth groups (TUXIS and Sheil), as well as secular retreat programs (mainly Operation Snowball). I also remember going on college visits with my parents here in the midwest, including University of Iowa, University of Wisconsin in Madison, Indiana University, Miami University in Ohio, Knox College and University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (where I ended up). Back then I wanted to make movies and that’s what I recall talking about with some of the admissions counselors/advisors that we met with on the various campuses.

I recall liking Indiana best “on paper” (we didn’t have access to the internet yet) and being less impressed in person. I appreciated that Wisconsin was by the lake (reminding me of home) and it felt a bit too big for me. I loved the Iowa campus, with a river running through it, and that was my top choice until I got in to UIUC (which we called “U of I”). My parents were understandably enthusiastic about me going to our “in state” school, which had a really good reputation and was the most affordable option. That said, at UIUC we understood that my best chance for acceptance (with my less competitive ACT score and grades) was to apply to the school called Applied Life Studies back then. I chose to major in Leisure Studies: Recreation/Program Management, which in many ways was a really good fit for me.

As with so many pivotal moments in life, I’ll never know what might have been if I went to any of the other schools that I applied and got into (Iowa, Wisconsin and Indiana), where I’d have started in Liberal Arts and had more time to decide my major/career path. I did have a wonderful experience going to undergrad and grad school at UIUC, where I made so many close friends and met the love of my life/your dear dad. I also never would have dreamed the trajectory that led me to the role I am in now as a Career Advisor with the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University, which I really enjoy.

I have learned so much from parenting your 21 and 15 year old siblings/my living children and the experience is often not how I anticipated it would be. Which reminds me that parenting you might also have been different than I imagined. It’s human nature to have hopes and dreams for ourselves, our loved ones and especially our babies, as they grow into adolescents and then young adults.

I started writing this last Friday night, while our family watched the movie CODA together for the umpteenth time. G requested it, as they are taking American Sign Language (ASL) for their high school foreign language at ETHS (where they are a freshman/9th grader) and love it so much. It was the first time G and we watched it since they started formally learning ASL (though they had been self teaching themselves for awhile), which made it even more meaningful. It is such a beautiful story of what it means to be part of a loving and supportive family, while also growing up and pursuing independence, as well as the vocation(s) we feel called towards.

CODA features one of my all time favorite songs, “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell, though I only *discovered* and came to really appreciate it in recent years. I shared more about it, as well as CODA, in S’s 19th Birthday post. Speaking of S, they recently started a part time job at a local bike shop, assembling new bicycles for those who order them there. It seems to be going well and a great fit for your lego-loving older sibling. Navigating “emerging adulthood,” as some refer S’s stage of life, has been challenging for them and us. Your dad and I are doing our best to support S through their many steps forward and some steps back.

On Saturday we visited your grave at the cemetery as a family, in honor of this 17th anniversary of your birth and day, because with our busy schedules there wasn’t another time that worked for all of us. Dad, G and I picked up S from their weekly improv class at the iO Theater to drive there, followed by a delicious pizza dinner at Pequod’s in Morton Grove on our way home.

Tonight we have tickets to see the musical Mamma Mia at ETHS, which we think you would have enjoyed (either as part of the cast, crew or in the audience). G auditioned and did not make it. It is meaningful to me to do things like this on your special day in your honor and memory.

During our rides to/from the cemetery on Saturday, I read more of my mom/your Grandma Jacquie’s letters to her mom aloud. Our family enjoys doing that on longer car trips. Serendipitously, we are currently reading letters from 1992, when (as I shared earlier) I was 17 and my mom/Grandma Jacquie was 50. I had to take a beat when I realized the connection to how old you would be if you lived longer and how old I am now. The photo below was taken in 1992, close to Mom’s 5oth Birthday, when I was 17. She shared in a letter to her mom/my Grandma Dee around that time, that our gift to her was having this family portrait taken together (which she wanted/asked for). This was one of only two formal photos that our Axe family of four commissioned. I believe I was in second grade, around age seven or eight, for that one, and Mom would’ve been in her early forties.

In another letter we read on Saturday, Mom talked about how we had gone to church at Sheil Catholic Center one Sunday and there were 17 roses on the altar, in honor and memory of one of my childhood friends, Rosalinda, who died when we were 10. The roses were there because it was on or near her birthday, when she would’ve turned 17. That was another moment that felt like more than a coincidence during this golden birthday/17th anniversary of your death week.

As I shared here, 12 years ago, when writing for The Today Voice, Rosalinda was the first person that I knew who died. Her mom, Adela, who I went on to ask to be my confirmation sponsor and became another Godmother to me, modeled living gracefully as a bereaved mother, which had a significant impact on me, long before I became one myself. I learned from Adela that it is okay to talk about those we love who have died, especially our babies/children, and do meaningful things that help us to honor their lives and memories, regardless of how old they were.

At this age and stage of my life, I tend to tinker more with blog posts before sharing them, as I don’t have the time that I once did to complete them in one sitting. I recognize they could be shorter and sometimes are. However, I also continue to find writing and processing this way to be very therapeutic.

I also worked some on this one while watching the Masters golf tournament this past Sunday. In recent years your dad and I have been watching “Full Swing,” a TV series/documentary that features golfers on the PGA tour, and I became a fan of Rory McIlroy. Leading up to the Masters this year there was a lot of hype around Rory, as, in spite of being the #2 ranked golfer in the world, he had gone 11 years since winning his last major golf tournament. It was also Rory’s 17th time at the Masters (there’s your golden birthday number again) and he finally won! This was also the last of the four tournaments he needed to win to have a “Grand Slam” and he was only the sixth male golfer to ever achieve this feet (joining Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods). The other three tournaments which make up the Grand Slam are: the U.S. Open, PGA Championship and the Open Championship (also known as the British Open).

I wonder if you would share your dad and my love for golf?

G was into it for awhile when they were younger and S has joined us at the range, as well as played several times, but has never been a big fan. Another thing I appreciated in my mom’s/Grandma Jacquie’s letters was her descriptions of my being on the ETHS girls golf team. Fall of 1992 was my senior year and my last of three on the team. I know one of the reasons that Mom shared such details about my playing was because her dad/my Grandpa Jack loved golf and worked at a ranger at the famous Harbour Town golf course on Hilton Head Island (HHI), where the Heritage Classic PGA tournament is being played this week and always follows the Masters.

Speaking of HHI, our family got to return there for the first time since 2019 last July for two weeks. It was a wonderful and nostalgic trip, as well as bittersweet, being the first time we visited since my parents/your Grandma and Grandpa Axe died. We spent quality time with our extended family who live there, had lots of fun and relaxing hours a the beach/surfing waves on rafts in the ocean, Dad and I played golf several times, we went for beautiful family bike rides, enjoyed many delicious meals and (unfortunately) ended it with two of us who hadn’t already gotten COVID that summer catching it. Ugh. It was my first time ever with COVID and it super sucked, with my symptoms dragging on for six weeks.

I won’t recap a lot more from the last year, as I do that so much in my annual birthday letters to your siblings and my “Rewind” posts. That said, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one of the many factors that have made 2024-25 feel so chaotic and exciting — our big home renovation! Living through that has been a fascinating and stressful experience. Two nights ago, after over over six months of Dad and I sleeping in our first floor sunroom and sharing our first floor bathroom with S and G, we got to move back into our bedroom and this morning, your golden birthday, we go to take our first showers in our newly remodeled primary bathroom!

One of my favorite pastimes in recent months, has been planning the details/booking experiences for our family’s epic adventure/trip across the pond this summer! We’ve been wanting to reschedule our UK trip, originally planned for August 2020, for awhile and finally decided we could make it work this year. It has many of the same elements that we had intended to do back then, as well as several changes — including not going to Scotland or Wales this time, so we can really see/explore England. I wish we were going to be a party of five, with you joining us, and I appreciate imagining that you’ll be there in spirit.

Tonight after dinner, G was reflecting on how they used to have a sort of shrine to you in their bedroom when they were younger. We were discussing how they learned about you and tried to understand your place in their life over the years, since your were born and died before G existed. Somehow that led to a conversation about how G has thought and talked about you over the years, which reminded me of a time when G was having a playdate with a new friend from school and I overheard them telling the friend about their sister Molly. Soon after that, I wrote and shared this blog post, Perspective at Seven, which I found and read to S and G this evening. It was really amusing to reflect on and also felt profound to remember how G and I were navigating being a bereaved sibling and bereaved mother eight years ago.

So much can be true at the same time and though our family has a lot ot feel grateful for and to look forward to, on micro and macro levels, life also feels really hard and heavy in both of those realms. We continue to take things one day, one step, one next right thing at a time.

As my mom/your Grandma Jacquie used to say, “the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time” and “more will be revealed.” Wise words… She was full of them, in the best possible way.

I never imagined at 50 I would be both a bereaved mother and a bereaved daughter times two.

Though these days my grief feels lighter and life goes on without (you), I still miss my mom, my dad and you, my dear child Molly, so much.

You are never far from my mind and always in my heart.

Love,
Mom

I have you in my heart. ~ Philippians 1:7

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Remembering Molly:

16 Years

15 Years

14 Years

13 Years

12 years

11 years

10 years

9 years

8 years

7 years

6 years

5 Years

4 Years

3 Years

2 Years

1 Year

Molly’s Birthday

Always in Our Hearts: For Molly and Babies Benson from Kathy Benson on Vimeo