She Grew Us Up

The autumnal equinox was yesterday - September 23, 2023 - the day the sun crossed the celestial equator.

Yesterday was also the day an unusually diverse group of people came together all from over the country to celebrate the life of the best person I will ever know, Carley Meade.  

I could write a book about Carley.  Maybe someday I will.  It's so hard to describe what she meant to me, her friends, her family, and all of the children she nannied for during the too few years before she left us.  

Carley was everything.  She still is.  Most of all, though, Carley was love.  

Love for Jon Meade, her beloved husband, whom Carley affectionately called Jonny Love.   Her love for Jon burned as brightly as the sun, inextinguishable to the very end.  It's a flame that will burn for all of eternity.  Theirs was a love story for the ages. 

Love for her family.  They provided Carley with the space to become who she was and then generously shared her with the rest of us.  What a gift they gave us!

Love for her friends.  To know Carley, to meet her even one time, was to be friends with her forever.  She so loved the women of Flo, her Ultimate Frisbee playing teammates.  In ways that I don't think those of us in the Nashville Ultimate Frisbee community fully understood at the time, she was the nucleus of our wonderful band of merry pranksters - men and women - who traveled across the South on weekends to play in Ultimate Frisbee tournaments in the days of our relative youth.  Those of us fortunate enough to have been a part of that group shared a collective bond with Carley that was made up of a thousand individual memories of inside jokes and stolen moments she shared with every one of us.  Carley was the tie that bound us all tougher - she still is - and all of those singular moments with her, held together with her love,  formed the patchwork quilt that tells the story of our lives the decade plus before we said goodbye to our youth and grudgingly entered middle age.

Love for our children who became her children.  Carley fiercely loved them with her whole heart. Every day, every hour, every minute she spent with one of our children was as precious and pure as the rarest gemstone.  To call Carley a nanny trivializes who she was and what she meant to our children.  

Carley was the sun and our babies and toddlers the planets that orbited around her in a solar system that she created for them with her beautiful and endless imagination.  Like magic, she created entire worlds for our children that were known only to them and not to us as parents, which is maybe the best kind of magic of all.  

I arrived home from work one day to find all of JP's stuffed animals ("lovies" in Carley's lexicon) carefully arranged in the den.  Twenty or thirty lovies.  JP told me they were having a rock concert.  I'm guessing he was playing the ukulele or the drums.  That's the world that Carley created for my son that day.  A world of rock concerts and band members and cheering fans.  What she created for Jude and me is a memory we will carry with us forever.  

For all of the children that Carley cared for over the years, she created worlds and invented games unique to a specific child and, of course, to his or her family.  Although Carley's physical presence is no longer with us, her spiritual presence - her essence - remains in a very palpable way for the children who were blessed to have her in their lives during such an important time in their young lives.   

How much she meant - and still means - to our children and the role she played in their lives - and continues to play - defies description.  Yesterday, Elena Rollins eloquently captured some of this when she recalled Carley's greeting to her children - Chloe and Phillip - every time she arrived at their home. "Hello, friend."  That was what Carley always said that to one or both of them, with a smile on her face and love in her heart.  

"Hello, friend."  

In a way, that's what Carley said to every one of us - or it's what we felt, anyway - when we had the great and good fortune to see her.  

For many of us, Carley was more than a friend.  She was family in the truest sense of the word.  During the last week of Jude's pregnancy with Joe, we learned at a routine doctor's visit that Dr. Maikis wanted to admit Jude to the hospital on the spot and deliver Joe that morning.  What did we do?  We called Carley and, of course, she and Jon picked up JP from Children's House at the end of his school day and stayed with him that night.  Yesterday, I learned that she did the same thing for Rhonda and Scott Simms when their second daughter was born.  

For several couples - Elena and Rob, Rhonda and Scott, Jim and Stephanie, Brian and Rebecca, and Jude and me, to name a few - Carley was in our lives on a daily basis for a period of time.  For two, three, or four years, she generously provided us with the support we needed as we learned to balance being a parent with our social and professional obligations.  Carley was our back stop.  Our safety net.  As Rhonda Sims so aptly said, "she grew us up," as parents.  Then, like Mary Poppins, she departed and became a part of another family who needed her more than we did.

Why?  Because she had grown us up to the point that we could parent our children more or less on our own.

Of course, Carley never really left us.  She was still there, babysitting for all of our children on occasion.  JP and Joe were never as happy then when they learned that Carley was coming over to stay with them while Jude and I attended an event or went to dinner together.  And wonder of wonders, for our boys, Carley and Jon came to an occasional soccer, basketball, or baseball games for our boys.  Even after Carley got sick and during difficult, painful times, she and Jon still came to JP's 4th grade operetta, in which JP was dressed up as Frank Sinatra.  Every year, Carley and Jon went to the State Fair with us.  Carley loved - there's that word again - seeing her kids in the real world, competing or performing, long after they were old enough that she had ceased caring for them on a regular basis.  

You see, Carley grew our children up, too.  

Saturday morning, JP had a cross country meet for MBA in Chattanooga.  After the race, he skipped the bus ride with his teammates to ride back with me, so he would have time to get home, shower, and go to the celebration of Carley's life at Edwin Warner Park.  He had a travel baseball doubleheader and could have made the second game - and baseball is very important to JP - but not nearly as important as celebrating Carley's life with others who love her as much as he does.  

In fact, a couple of weeks ago, JP asked Jon if he could be one of the speakers at the celebration of Carley's wife. Speaking in a public to a large group of people does not come naturally to JP, at least not yet, so this was big deal for him.  What he showed to Jude and me, though, was a maturity beyond his years and a desire to be seen and heard in an arena where he could express how important Carley was to him and how much he loves and misses her.  

At Jon's request, I agreed to emcee the speaker's portion of Saturday's celebration, which was an honor and a privilege beyond measure.  It was comforting to gaze out on the crowd and see so many familiar faces, many of whom I hadn't seen in years.  Dave Turell.  Kelli McAbee.  Carrie Plummer.  And on and on.  It was something I'll never forget.  

Jude spoke about Carley and led her FLO teammates in a rendition of Michael Jackson's "Billy Jean" that they had movingly performed for Carley at Alive Hospice more than four years ago.  I remember hiding my tears from them when they were at our house, practicing, before they went to sing for Carley.  They were celebrating her life even then, preparing to lift their voices in song to express their undying love for Carley.  They did it again on Saturday and as I watched them singing, my mind drifted back to so may Ultimate Frisbee tournaments and so many silly songs sung by FLO to the opposing team after a hard fought game.  Singing for Carley - then and now - was an act of love for one of their own.    

JP nervously stepped to microphone after Jude and FLO.  The crowd grew silent as he pulled out a piece of paper.  Slowly and deliberately, JP lifted his head and his voice quavering with emotion, began speaking to the crowd.  After a few sentences, he got choked up, tears rolling down his face.  JP paused, tried to start again, and couldn't continue.  He turned away from the microphone and the crowd, trying to collect himself.  I stood up and quietly walked over to him, hugged him, then put my arm around him.  He took a moment, turned back around, and spoke to the crowd from his aching heart.

In my life, I've never been prouder of JP.  He loves Carley so very much.  He misses her every day.  He's old enough to appreciate the impact she had on his life.  All of that, and more, was evident in his remarks to the group.  I don't think - I know - that somewhere Carley was watching and listening - probably crying a little bit because she could see that JP was so sad but smiling through the tears, too, with pride.  Like a spring shower when the sun suddenly comes out and a rainbow is just beginning to form.  

JP talked about how Carley lived her life and how she would want us to live our lives - loving and caring for each other.  He talked about how the world would be a better place if we all tried to live our lives like Carley lives hers.  He's right about that, too.

Several other people spoke about their love for Carley and told stories, too, that made us laugh and cry. I wasn't alone, I know, in not wanting the day to end.  

It was a beautiful day of celebration.  Sadness, yes, but so much love.  Love for Carley Meade.  Love for Jon Meade.  Love for Carley's family.  Love for all of Carley's children.  Love for each other.  

And, for me, that's what Carley was about.  Love.  It's what she always will be about.  

Love.