Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss & Love
Matt Logelin
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN: 044656429X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Matt and Liz Logelin were high school sweethearts. After years of long-distance dating, the pair finally settled together in Los Angeles, and they had it all: a perfect marriage, a gorgeous new home, and a baby girl on the way. Liz's pregnancy was rocky, but they welcomed Madeline, beautiful and healthy, into the world on March 24, 2008.
Just twenty-seven hours later, Liz suffered a pulmonary embolism and died instantly, without ever holding the daughter whose arrival she had so eagerly awaited. Though confronted with devastating grief and the responsibilities of a new and single father, Matt did not surrender to devastation; he chose to keep moving forward-- to make a life for Maddy.
In this memoir, Matt shares bittersweet and often humorous anecdotes of his courtship and marriage to Liz; of relying on his newborn daughter for the support that she unknowingly provided; and of the extraordinary online community of strangers who have become his friends. In honoring Liz's legacy, heartache has become solace.
daughter would somehow disappear from my world. My eyes adjusted to the sunlight and I looked up at the sky. I pulled the shade of the car seat over Madeline, knowing that Liz would have been concerned about the sun hitting our baby’s bright white skin for the first time. I turned around, said good-bye to the nurse, and walked toward my car to secure Madeline into it for the first time. I was worried that I had installed it incorrectly, so I gave the car seat a few gentle wiggles before feeling
heard the automated message say something about an itinerary change for your trip to Oahu.” “Fuck. I’m gonna call them.” “Do you want to listen to the message?” “No, I can’t.” What I couldn’t tell Steve was that I was hiding from the answering machine. There was a message somewhere on there from the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office, and I didn’t want to hear it. There was also another message that I’d been avoiding—it was from Liz. She’d left it from the hospital when she was on bed rest.
explored together. Back before they were fenced in, we would climb up the steps of the main temple and walk into the great palace—and to a Midwestern kid, well, that was just incredible. I was a teenager, I was in love, and I was learning how much I enjoyed things like travel and discovering other cultures, which, until I met Liz, I hadn’t even thought about at all. When I was nineteen, the puzzle that was my world was just being assembled. At age thirty, it had been blown apart, and now I was
an incredible peace—a peace I hadn’t felt since last March. In the next few seconds, I learned that no matter how pure one’s sudden inner calmness, and no matter how much spit one smears on the plastic, it’s absolutely impossible to see anything while weeping inside a snorkeling mask. I resurfaced, slipped it off my face, and used my salty, wet hands to wipe my eyes. Then I swam back toward where Madeline was splashing around with Tom and Deb. Candee was sitting on a towel at the shore, beaming
robber trying to pick up the cash spilling from his bag as he fled the scene of the crime. She was squealing with delight as the frosting gushed through her fingers and flew in every direction while she waved her hands with excitement. Within seconds we were both absolutely covered in cake. And for a few minutes, I completely forgot about everything but Madeline’s happiness. She looked so damn proud of herself after the destruction, and truth be told, I was pretty proud of her, too. To see that