McKayla's Miracle Revisited
Copyright© 2011 by HLD
Chapter 2
"Can we talk for a minute, Mommy?" Maureen began nervously. I could tell something was up. She had only been home from school for a couple of days. She was a straight-A student in high school, valedictorian of her class. I wish I could say that I had something to do with that, but I didn't. I was an underachieving, slightly above-average student myself. The fact of the matter was that Maureen turned out the way she did because of McKayla.
I see so much of my wife in our daughter, even though they look nothing like one another. Where McKayla was tall and athletic, Maureen is built more like me: short and curvy. She's got a full head of curly sandy-blonde hair, not McKayla's glorious straight, raven-black mane. Yet to watch them walk and listen to them talk, they're almost identical. Our daughter copied many of McKayla's mannerisms and they have the same Mensa-level intelligence and curiosity about the world.
McKayla died when Maureen was in the eighth grade, but our daughter has always been wise beyond her years. I feared that she would be one of those kids who emotionally imploded when they lost a parent, but the exact opposite happened. Maureen dug in and became determined to make her Mom proud.
A month after the funeral, Maureen came into my bedroom one night and sat down. She had a pamphlet from the Duke University School of Medicine.
"I'm going to cure cancer," she said softly.
"I know you are, sweetheart," I said, not to patronise or belittle her, but because I knew right then that if there was cure for cancer to be found anywhere in this world, Maureen was going to hunt it down, and she was going to destroy the disease that had taken her Mom from her. So she and I made a deal; if she could get a free-ride scholarship (tuition, fees, room & board, and books) to any school in the country, I'd buy her a car.
I didn't mention the part about a trust fund had already been established for our daughter that had—at that time—almost half of a million dollars in it for whatever she wanted to do with her life. Did I mention that McKayla made us a very good living as a financial planner?
Four years later, after receiving an academic free ride to the pre-med program at Duke, I offered to take her to any car dealer she wanted that was within a reasonable budget to pick out her new ride. Do you know what my daughter did? She went into the garage and told me she wanted her Mom's old BMW convertible that neither of us could bear to part with.
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