Two Kisses for Maddy_ A Memoir of Loss & Love - Matthew Logelin [93]
This gathering was without question my favorite part of Christmas—no decorations, no overzealous happiness. Just good conversation and drinking with friends. When I was there, I didn’t feel different. Sure, things were different, but I was somehow the same. The night before I descended into the maelstrom of family, my child was safe with her grandparents, and I was safe in the circle of my friends.
I remembered how Liz would roll her eyes when she hung out here with us, hearing the same stories a thousand times. I loved that. She would get tired early and want to get home while the rest of us reverted to our college selves. And I’d keep saying, “Just a few more minutes, just a few more minutes,” until she’d really had enough and left me there to sleep on the couch, summoning me the next morning at eight with a phone call or a text message, ready to drag me into the day of Christmas festivities.
Just like last year, I woke up on the couch. Just like last year, I woke up to a phone ringing a bit too early for my liking. And though I knew that it was my mom calling and not Liz, I felt ready to join my family and to spend my daughter’s first Christmas with the spirit my wife would have wanted me to have.
Chapter 25
she
was here.
she
has been here.
I had been joining the Goodman family on their yearly vacations to Mexico since I was nineteen years old. To me, back then, they were a revelation. My family didn’t travel this way. We’d go up north sometimes with my mom to my grandpa’s cabin on Lake Mille Lacs, or canoeing in the boundary waters with my dad, but there were no group outings to Mexico. We didn’t explore the ruins of ancient civilizations or swim in the Gulf. We’d had our own kinds of adventures, like shooting cans with BB guns and catching crayfish, but traveling outside the country was just never in our playbook.
This annual trip was an incredibly important tradition for Liz’s family. Candee’s side was mostly based in Minnesota, so it was easy for them to gather together for holidays and reunions, but Tom’s was scattered all around the country, east, west, and north. The yearly trip to Akumal was how they stayed connected and close. Once it was clear that Liz and I were in love, I became part of the family—and thus part of the family trip. Every year, thirty of us would fly down, hang out together on the beach, and relax.
Now we were here, but Liz was not. I had spent plenty of time with her parents and her sister many times over the years, but this was really the first time I would be with Tom’s extended family since the funeral, and it shook me. Knowing I’d see these familiar faces without Liz was difficult to comprehend. Being in Mexico at all felt like a really big deal. I had learned how to navigate Minnesota and Los Angeles, but this trip was my first attempt at visiting the places we shared abroad. If I could do this, I knew, I could do anything.
So much had changed since Liz died. It was fucking insane, really. Now, on this trip, two important things were happening simultaneously, and I was doing both in her honor. The first was that I was here with Maddy, sharing more things and places that her mother had cherished. The second was that we were about to officially launch the Liz Logelin Foundation. After Rachel and I decided to really go through with the nonprofit, we organized a board of directors to get it off the ground and keep it running: me, her, Liz’s parents, Anya, Elizabeth, Jackie, A.J., and a few blog readers. Even though one-fourth of the board was in Mexico, business had to happen anyway.
If Maddy was my first priority, the foundation was now the clear second. This meant that not even the lure