Hemi, a multi-colored Maine Coon cat, slinks through Cathy Hocking’s Mooresville home looking for his owner, Hocking’s daughter, Kelsey Richardson.
Hemi checks upstairs. He looks in the kitchen. At night, he curls up on Kelsey’s bed, waiting for her return.
Kelsey, 18, and her sister, Karli, 20, were killed instantly after a wrong-way driver hit them head-on last month in Arizona.
In the weeks since the crash, Hocking has struggled to find purpose in the devastating loss.
She’s seen signs that her daughters are still with her every day.
“I went to the grave the day before Mother’s Day and I noticed there was a purple and pink flower still there from one of the flowers on top of the casket,” she said. “They were brown and wilted, but when I picked them up and turned them over they were beautiful. I peeled back the dead petals and the flowers were completely still there.
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“I felt like that was a sign,” she said. “I felt like they were letting me know ‘we’ve been waiting on you, Mom. We’re still here.’ ”
LAST TIME TOGETHER
Kelsey would have had to miss Karli’s graduation from Grand Canyon University because of finals, so while on spring break she visited her sister out west to celebrate.
They were headed to watch the sunrise at the Grand Canyon on April 14 -- Good Friday. At the same time, a fellow GCU student was driving southbound in the northbound lanes for at least six miles on I-17 just outside Phoenix, according to police reports.
The vehicles collided head on. No one survived.
“There wasn’t even a second for them to scream,” Hocking said. “I think they died like that because they did nothing to deserve to suffer.”
DEVASTATING NEWS
Hocking and her husband, Gary, were finishing breakfast on the morning of April 14 when law enforcement officers knocked on her door.
The couple is separated, but Gary was there that morning to help with tax preparations.
“I don’t know how people say they don’t believe in God,” she said. “Maybe he doesn’t touch their lives as much because they don’t believe, but Gary never eats here. He just happened to that day. … I’m thankful he was because I don’t know how I would’ve handled that news alone.”
While Gary Hocking isn’t the girls’ birth father, he raised them, Hocking said.
“I’m functioning,” Gary Hocking said. “Mornings and nights are worse for me, probably because I have time to think. I don’t know what I am. People ask me how I am or what I am, but I still can’t get my head around it.”
A COMMUNITY STEPS UP
In the family’s time of need, the community rallied.
Dr. Tony Johnson and his wife donated the Johnson Carriage House and Meadows for the reception after the funeral.
Tom and Cindy Norment donated the gravesites and flowers. Langtree Catering and Events donated their time, working the funeral for free.
Strangers have paid for meals, gift baskets and other needs.
“People have been reaching out in an amazing way,” she said.
FINDING THE WORDS
A mother never plans to bury her children. But even through the grief, Hocking believed she was the only one who could deliver their eulogy.
“No one is going to love them or be there for them like me because I’m their mom,” she said. “I just told myself, ‘You have to do this. It’s the very last thing you can do for them. After today you can’t do anything for them. They’re gone.’ ”
Writing it was a process.
“I worked on it for three days, but it would sound like me helping Karli with a paper for college,” she said. “I wanted it to be from the heart because I wanted everyone to know how big their hearts were. I wanted everyone to know they were real. I felt like no one would be able to honor them, or explain how wonderful they are or would know all the little things that I know about them.”
On April 21, the day before the memorial service, Hocking tucked herself into bed around 11 p.m. to try once more to find the words.
Then, they poured.
“I watched a video Karli’s roommate had made of the girls,” she said. “I cried. I just cried and wrote.”
She wrote until 2:45 a.m., woke up at 8:30, finished the eulogy and headed to the service.
She took the stage at the Cove Church in Mooresville and pleaded with the capacity crowd to listen.
“As sad as I am, I feel like God chose my daughters to wake you up and wake up other people in the world,” she said.
Her message resonated.
On Facebook, Stan Moore called it “the most heartfelt, meaningful and moving eulogy I have ever witnessed.”
Hocking said she’s received letters of support from across the globe from people who heard the eulogy, which can be viewed on YouTube at bit.ly/2qpVA7J.
IN THEIR HONOR
Family pictures, cards and other tokens of love and sympathy sit atop Kelsey’s 1954 Strauss piano in the living room of Hocking’s home.
Hemi rubs against one of the legs of the wooden key piano as Hocking shows off Karli’s diploma from Grand Canyon University.
She was only a few weeks away from graduating with a bachelor's degree in communications.
Hocking walked in her daughter’s place at the April 27 graduation wearing Karli’s cap and gown and Kelsey’s Western Carolina University medal of academic achievement.
“I was so proud of her I couldn’t see straight,” Cathy Hocking said of the ceremony. “I was just floating. … There was a standing ovation and the whole student body and all their parents yelled for Karli. … I was in the first row, as I walked out with all the kids, everyone was high-fiving.
“She didn’t know all those people, but … every single person mentioned her name.”
SEARCHING FOR MEANING
In the weeks since the funeral, Cathy Hocking has done her best to move forward.
That’s what Kelsey and Karli would want, she said.
Cellphone videos and voicemail messages provide some comfort. Hocking often calls the girls’ phones, just to hear their voices on the answer messages.
But the ebb and flow of grief, anger and confusion continues.
“The reality of it all is that I know they are gone,” she said. “I cry all the time. I wake up crying. I go to bed crying. I’m lonely all the time. I’m extremely angry. I try not to be, but I am really angry. … We were supposed to go to yoga and go hiking and camping.
“He took that from me. He took everything from me.”
But Hocking now believes she has a better understanding for why it happened. She plans to use her daughters’ story to help keep them alive.
“I think God took them to impact the world,” she said. “I think their deaths are not over. I don’t think their deaths are over by a long shot. I believe truly that people will ask me to speak. I will tell them of the Lord and the girls and their impact. I think people will listen. I believe I will be able to share Christ with people.
“Over 600 people have come to know the Lord as their savior because of this.”
