One of my “life rules” is to always go to the funeral. I was 19 when I went to a friend’s dad’s funeral and saw how much it meant to my friend that I was present, even though I’d never met her dad. This week, that commitment has been tested – in the aftermath of the July Fourth Guadalupe River flood, my hometown of Houston has been particularly hard hit. Hunt, Texas and the surrounding areas in the beautiful Hill Country are a little over three hours away, and for decades, the summer camps, river lodges and private homes along the river have been second homes for many Texans.
It wasn’t until the early afternoon of the Fourth that we started to realize that something was wrong. My wife and I and our kids were with my mom and stepdad and my brother and sister and their kids at my mom’s farm outside of Round Top, about 150 miles due east of Kerr County. We had just won a blue ribbon in the 175th annual Round Top Fourth of July Parade with our Wizard of Oz themed float, so we were riding high, sitting on the porch and talking and laughing about our victorious morning, and debating the pros and cons of a Willie Nelson float for next year. Then Linsay showed me a text from her mom, who lives on the Guadalupe just across the river from the Heart of the Hills summer camp, which my own mom had attended from her home in southern Oklahoma over sixty years ago. The text said not to worry – that she had made it out OK, but that it was a bad scene. That was the record scratch moment interrupting our blissful American holiday. We all pulled out our phones and started searching for news and texting friends.
One of the first people I thought of was my friend Josh, who had just built a vacation home on the banks of the river not far from my mother-in-law. I shot him a quick text, asking if he was OK – “Are y’all all right???” His response, only a couple of minutes later, was shocking: “Yeah. Of more concern is that my parents were staying on the south fork just past Camp Mystic. My father is OK, but my mom got washed away in the waters and remains missing.”
I burst into tears, immediately realizing that in all likelihood, Josh’s mom was dead. I have never gotten a text like that but managed a response (“Oh man. Praying for her. We love you.”) as the gravity of the situation started to hit me. Then I saw I had missed a call from my friend Brodie, whose wife Maddy has a family place on the Guadalupe. I called Brodie back and heard the harrowing story of how his friend that was staying with them had saved their lives by waking them up at 3:30 in the morning with water rising fast, just in time for them to grab their little ones and scamper to higher ground. Minutes later, they watched their vehicles and homes wash away in the floodwaters. They were ultimately able to make it over to my mother-in-law’s house and camped out there until they could safely leave the area.
But Maddy and Brodie, and my mother-in-law and her husband, turned out to be, relatively speaking, the lucky ones. As of now, nearly two weeks later, the human toll of this tragedy is horrific in its scope and in its uncertainty. Over 100 people are confirmed dead, and more than 100 others are still missing and presumed dead. This was a particularly violent event and the process of locating human bodies and remains has been painstaking, and heartbreaking for those whose loved ones are among those who have not been recovered.
But the world keeps turning, and these families have had to start the grieving process, ready or not. I have been to four funerals for flood victims, and I want to share four of the stories in an effort to honor the lives lost and recognize the pain – and strength – of survivors who have had to say goodbye to loved ones, many of whom were just getting started with their lives. If there is a silver lining to this most awful thundercloud, perhaps it is that the scale of this disaster, and the deaths of so many young ones, has forced those of us in proximity to it to actually register these deaths, to talk about them with our own family members, including our children, and to try to figure out how to support these grieving friends.
I am writing this in part to process my own emotions, but also to share the stories of four beautiful people and the families they leave behind. The way these families have dealt with the initial stages of their grief has been nothing short of inspirational. I keep thinking about JFK’s book title, Profiles in Courage, as I move through these days, with each story seemingly more tragic than the last. These moms and dads and daughters and sons and sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents are going through a living hell right now, waking up each morning after a fitful night of sleep and realizing it wasn’t all a bad dream. They are going to need the friends and communities that have shown up to love and support them to continue to do so for a long time.
The trauma from this flood instantly metastasized across space, not just Texas but the world, and will flow through time for generations. That trauma is centered on the hundreds of lives lost and the thousands of their family members, but it also hit the thousands of heroes forged in the Texas heat this July. A lot of those campers, camp counselors, volunteers, and rescue and search teams are struggling in the aftermath. With survivor’s guilt. With PTSD. With all the things you can imagine, and probably some things you can’t. I hope they know how much all of us in their communities appreciate them, love them and stand by ready to comfort and support them, too.
On Saturday afternoon, I joined what had to be over a thousand people at St. Luke’s Methodist Church to celebrate and mourn Chloe Childress, a counselor at Camp Mystic. She was just 18 years old, had recently graduated from the Kinkaid School in Houston and was about to head to the University of Texas at Austin, following in the footsteps of her dad and many other family members. She was not only smart but beautiful and energetic and sweet and funny, and she shared a special bond with her dad and my friend, Matt. Matt had been weighing heavy on my heart all week. He was in the abyss that every parent prays they’ll never have to peer over the edge of, much less fall into. Where the most precious thing in your life has been snatched away from you, and there are no do-overs.
I got one of the last seats in the first overflow room at the church watching a livestream from the main sanctuary next door (they wound up having to set up at least one more room with a livestream to accommodate all of the mourners). Chloe’s girl friends were all dressed in white. Several of them, including a group of her Mystic friends, shared their stories of Chloe. I was struck by how many of them talked about the Childress family, not just Chloe, and it became clear that the Childress household had been an epicenter for Chloe’s many groups of friends.
And then it was time for the Childress family to take the stage – her mom, Wendie, her younger brother Jack, and Matt. Just looking at them started my tears welling up again. Wendie somehow was able to share her love and memories of Chloe, a precocious early talker who “never stopped” once she got started, and a Super Swiftie who, with her mom’s help, had pretty much stalked Taylor Swift at multiple concerts and in New York City. Wendie’s dad would end every phone call with Wendie by saying, “Chloe is going to do something really, really big.” She wanted to be a doctor.
Wendie signed off in tears, and it was Matt’s turn to speak. He talked movingly about the lifelong bonds that had formed among the families of the victims of the flood, especially those from Camp Mystic. He specifically thanked the Ferruzzo family, also from Houston, whose daughter Katherine had been a counselor alongside Chloe, and who were sitting up front at Chloe’s service.
Matt shared all the ways that he and Chloe had been especially close, saying goodnight with 17 kisses that morphed as she aged into just saying “seventeen” to each other; three squeezes of the hand to communicate those three words (I. LOVE. YOU.) that sometimes you might not want to say in public as a teenager. Matt was so open about how hard it was to lose a child, but how important it was to him and Wendie and Jack that her friends remember and continue to celebrate Chloe. He played snippets of a couple of their favorite songs (I Need My Girl by The National and My Hero by the Foo Fighters) and said that Hero had become his main nickname for Chloe. Well, as I texted a mutual friend after the service, Matt is my hero for modeling what it means to be a man, a father and a husband – someone who fulfills his responsibilities with love in his heart, no matter how difficult the circumstances. I will draw on his strength as inspiration during future tough times, and so will many of those in attendance – especially those young people mourning the loss of their friend Chloe.
The program for Chloe’s service included a bible verse from Isaiah (43:2) that I thought was a bold choice, referencing as it does the passing through of river waters. It turns out that Chloe had posted these words above her desk in her room before she went to camp:
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”
Three squeezes, Chloe.
A full house at Congregation Beth Israel celebrated the life of Josh’s mom Mollie on Sunday. I had read Mollie’s obituary a couple of days before and immediately realized that Josh had written it. His mom was that unique combination of total spitfire and caretaker that made her beloved by all but especially by her life’s companion, Josh’s dad Randy, and Josh and his brother Randy III. Mollie died as she had lived – in service to those around her, especially her family, literally saving Randy’s life by coaching him to get out of their vehicle that was trapped by the rising floodwaters as they tried to escape to higher ground. Her last words to Randy were “push harder,” and he acted on those words, narrowly escaping the car before it was swept away, and somehow finding his way to a signpost that he held on to until the waters receded. Mollie’s final actions in this world were the definition of “heroic.”
All three Schaffer men spoke at Mollie’s funeral. Josh led off, with his first nod to the sports obsession shared by him and his dad, as the self-proclaimed “opener,” noting that his brother Randy III was teed up for middle relief and his dad as the closer. Unsurprisingly for a successful trial lawyer (on the defense side), Josh spoke with eloquence, emotion and power about his beloved mother. He was self-deprecating, noting that Schaffer men are an acquired taste that many never acquire, and he was grateful to a mother who watched hundreds of Oilers, Astros and Rockets game with her husband and boys over the years, noting that she joked often that she was worried that she was going to mistakenly wind up in sports heaven, instead of where she wanted to go – art heaven.
The most memorable part of Josh’s tribute to his mother was how he described how he envisioned her last moments on Earth – after saving her husband’s life, she peacefully passed over into the other side, with her spirit guiding Randy to that 3-inch wide, life-saving post (in a river that had gone from 100 feet across to more than a hundred yards wide), then floating down the river to comfort the girls from Mystic who had also passed into the next world, while the spirits of her parents (Ro and Bo) encouraged Randy to hold on to that metal post. Josh put into perspective his mother’s death at the age of 76, dying with a cup that was pretty full, as she lived – a heroic caretaker; still too early, still tragic, but different than the young girls from Camp Mystic. Josh closed his remarks by quoting the Billie Joe Shaver classic Live Forever, as he told his niece and two sons that their grandmother would always be with them in spirit.
Randy III, the oldest son, was emotional, noting that just a year prior, he had stood in the same spot delivering the eulogy for his grandmother, and to be back to do the same for his mother was just too soon. Every son in attendance could relate. He wondered if he was still in a bad dream, and he poignantly remembered attending funerals for the mothers of friends, regretting that he had not had more empathy for them, because only now did he understand how deep their pain had been.
I wondered what Randy would be like. He’s an irascible guy who had to be struggling with survivor’s guilt. When I had initially read Josh’s obituary for his mom, I noted that he glossed over her conversion to Judaism late in her courtship with Randy, thinking to myself, “there’s got to be a real story there – a Christian Texas girl in the 60s converting to Judaism to get married?” There was indeed a story, and the fact that the synagogue might not have been the perfect place to share it made it the perfect place for the self-described contrarian, Randy. When he took the microphone, he immediately made it clear that he wasn’t as comfortable in the synagogue as he was at the ball field: “I’m not a religious person.” But he described Mollie as a “hardcore Catholic” who had fallen for a “softcore Jew,” and then he he regaled us with the tale of Mollie’s Jewish conversion classes (not at Randy’s urging, who wanted to be married to a shiksa) with a young rabbi in Austin , a rabbi that early in the months-long process started hitting on Mollie (“I know, rabbis too, right?” joked Randy). She told Randy about it but said she didn’t need any assistance – until the end of her classes, when the rabbi told her that her graduation was contingent upon her having sex with him! Randy had to make up a story about his wife being near-suicidal and in desperate need of speaking with her rabbi to get the operator to connect him to the rabbi’s unlisted phone number – when he answered, Randy told him that he and Mollie would be by the next day to either pick up her graduation certificate or to kick his ass. “You’re going to need a witness,” replied the shaken rabbi. “For a conversion ceremony or an ass-kicking?” quipped Randy. They got the certificate the next day in what was likely the briefest conversion ceremony ever. I don’t know what else there is that needs to be said to paint the picture of that couple, who were side by side for nearly six decades to come.
I hope you’re having a blast in art heaven, Mollie.
On Tuesday afternoon, I headed to St. Martin’s Episcopal Church for the funeral of my good friend Chris Jacobe’s daughter Mary Kate, one of the 8-year old Camp Mystic girls. Chris and I had worked together for many years and formed a bond that went beyond the office, getting together for guitar sessions or rounds of golf. I didn’t know that Mary Kate was one of the missing girls until a few days after the 4th, and when I got the text from a mutual friend, I sobbed while my wife held me. Chris and his wife Samantha are some of the most genuinely sweet people on this planet. It took me almost two days to be able to text Chris and tell him how sorry I was, and how much he meant to me.
I noticed that Wendie and Matt Childress were in the front row. The bonds formed by the families of all of the flood victims, but especially those of the Camp Mystic girls, were becoming clearer by the day. This service was more subdued. Mary Kate’s cousin, Jacobe Davis, spoke on behalf of the 13 cousins, tearfully noting that Mary Kate, the youngest of all their cousins and every cousin’s favorite, had seemingly possessed all of the good qualities that each of the other cousins had individually. She wondered how and why God could possibly have needed her more in Heaven than they needed her in this world.
Somehow, Chris mustered up the courage to speak. His words were few but powerful, and I want to share them here in their entirety:
Every night when we would put Mary Kate to bed, we would tell her we loved her, and she would tell us that she loved us more. Most nights, we would play along for a while before finally giving in and letting her have the last word. Because there was no beating her in a battle of wills. But sometimes, I would try to tell her that love is infinite. So, there can be no comparison. No “more.” Love is our closest link to God. To the infinite and the eternal. God is love. Mary Kate is a part of that infinite, eternal love now. While we may have what at times will feel like a long road ahead of us, this life and this world are a flash in the context of eternity. Our infinite love is eternally with our precious girl for the rest of this life and the life to come.
The day after the service, I shared with Chris that a song had started playing in my car on the way from the funeral to the reception that I thought he would appreciate (Thank You by Chris Cornell, one of Chris’s favorite musicians). He responded by texting me back a link to a song that he had never heard that came on when he was driving a few days before the funeral, saying it was “so on the nose I was wondering if it was somehow cranked out about this event, but it’s 10 years old.”
It’s a Sufjan Stevens song called Fourth of July, and the lyrics of the first verse go like this, and they just get more eerie, and yet more beautiful, as they go.
The evil, it spread like a fever ahead
It was night when you died, my firefly
What could I have said to raise you from the dead?
Oh, could I be the sky on the Fourth of July?
Infinite, eternal love, Mary Kate.
I had company for this return to St. Martin’s on Wednesday – my 12-year old daughter Ryan, because she and the sister of Ellen Getten play on the same basketball team. The Gettens just moved onto our block in Houston a few months ago so that Ellen and her older sister Gwynne could be closer to their school (St. John’s) and to their cousins, the Girauds, who live one street over from us. My wife Linsay (who was unable to attend because of work travel) is friends with Jennie Getten and her sister Abbie Giraud. The Girauds and Gettens are about as Houston as they come, so my daughter and I got to St. Martin’s almost half-an-hour before the service, which was still too late to find space in the nave, but just in time to get seats in the balcony before it filled up.
Somehow Gwynne, with a little support from her dad, Doug, was able to share a few stories about her younger sister. These two sisters were extraordinarily close, and Gwynne broke some of the tension in the church with a story about Ellen starting to laugh during the funeral service for their grandmother – a laugh she described as a witch’s cackle. My friend Will Giraud, Ellen’s uncle, took on the duty of communicating on behalf of the family, opening with “We are not a family of huggers,” followed shortly by “except for Ellen.” The youngest of the cousins in a reserved family, Ellen was anything but, with her loud laughs and no way of saying hello other than with big bear hugs. Will spoke movingly about the positive things that he had seen borne out of this unfathomable tragedy, from the support of rescuers and volunteers in Kerr County to the lifelong bonds formed by the Camp Mystic families to the green ribbons on trees all over Houston. On a personal level, he shared how through this tragedy he had seen the transformation of Jennie and Doug, who had somehow been able to transmute their overwhelming grief into heartwarming faith, leading their family through the most difficult moments a family can endure. The family of non-huggers had finally become a family of bear huggers, in honor of and to dull the pain of losing Ellen.
Will shared that Ellen’s greatest joy in life was being a student at St. John’s School, from which both Will and I graduated and where our kids now attend. In honor of Ellen’s love for SJS, Will asked that the congregation join him in an a capella version of the SJS alma mater. It’s a song I’ve sung more times than any other song except, maybe, Happy Birthday … but it had never been harder to sing than at that moment, alongside my own daughter, through tears that just wouldn’t stop.
Jellycats and bear hugs, Ellen.
There are many of us who have not lost family members but have multiple friends who have. I think I speak for most of them when I say that this experience has been painful and emotionally draining but also uplifting and bond-building in a way that funerals typically aren’t. Normally, you walk out of a funeral in a big city like Houston right into a world that knows nothing of your pain and is barreling along like nothing has changed, like no one has been lost. But the scope of this tragedy has created a different environment of truly shared pain and grief. Green ribbons are on trees everywhere, in remembrance of the Camp Mystic girls (green is the camp’s main color). Flags are at half-mast all over the city. We are all comforting one another, and there is beauty in that. And it’s not just Houston – the Guadalupe in summertime is full of camp kids and families from all over Texas, so Dallas and Austin and San Antonio and countless smaller cities and towns are feeling the same community-wide impact, and pain. My wife is from Uvalde, the site of the Robb Elementary killings, which were personal for her and others around Texas who grew up in Uvalde; but that horrific event was a much more localized one, without the same diaspora of suffering and funeral services that the Fourth of July flooding caused.
The other thing I’ve noticed is that all four of these funerals were for deeply spiritual, deeply loving people. It was impossible not to notice that every one of these recently departed were bright, shining lights. Maybe God brought home those who were ready for Him, who didn’t need more time on Earth to learn lessons or grow spiritually. I know that I feel inspired to be more like Chloe, more like Mollie, more like Mary Kate, and more like Ellen. I suppose it’s no coincidence that the families they leave behind have shown themselves to be more than capable of modeling this type of otherworldly courage, vulnerability, strength and connection in the face of the unthinkable through their actions and words over the last couple of hellish weeks.
The single most powerful thing I’m taking away from this tragedy is how these families, in the midst of their own grief, have formed this tightly-knit group of survivors, helping each other to bear the unbearable. Of course they would trade places with those of us who are observing and supporting them if they could; and, they see the beauty and resilience of the human spirit in and between themselves and the other families who lost loved ones to the floodwaters.
I want to close with words from a close friend. Taylor Reveley IV is a minister turned university president at Longwood in Virginia. He and I were classmates and fellow Classics majors in college, and he married a high school friend of mine from Houston, Marlo, who had spent seven summers at Camp Mystic. He shared these thoughts with me and a few other friends of his who were also struggling with the “why” of all of this in the immediate aftermath:
Nightmare events falling on innocent young children push up to the breaking point our sense of reality and sense of the possibility of any kind of just world. When human evil is the cause, our minds have a first place to put the blame. But when the cause of such innocent and horrific suffering is nature and happenstance, the soul aches in bewilderment differently with philosophy even more untethered — Where is God Almighty?
There aren’t answers or reasons. Instead, in the chaos and numb abyss in senseless tragedy, what there is is the grace of presence and heartbroken love, unlimited solidarity, through the suffering and pain. Whatever it is about suffering, God chose to go through it too, in earthly body in this created world, all the way through to an agonizing death.
The promise that a broken heart can hold onto is that we’ll be together again. God wants us to live in this world and make it better — but awaiting us is the life of the world to come.
When it hurts beyond what can be thought or described, the soul that’s lost unbearably too much gets to follow the faith of deep familiar words —- but also gets to shake and cry out and shout out, not in the proper prayer-book ways, but in shattered, angry, searching words. God will take them all in, and in the fullness of time there will be no more tears, and a peace passing understanding.
Thank you so much to the families who agreed to let me share their stories.
Please consider making a donation to the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund.