LaMeyer, Hailee Marie Age 11 of Stacy Student of Linwood Elementary Died unexpectedly from an illness on Saturday, August 23, 2008.
Hailee Marie LaMeyer was born September 23, 1996 in Forest Lake, Minnesota the third child and only daughter of Chad and Heidi (Proulx) LaMeyer. Hailee
was the beautiful little girl that Chad and Heidi had always dreamed
of. Hailee was always full of energy and full of life. She completed the
fifth grade at Linwood Elementary and was looking forward to joining
her classmates in their final year at the school, before moving on to
junior high school.
Hailee
will be dearly missed by those who were touched by her life including
her devoted parents, Chad and Heidi; brothers, Marcus and Justin;
grandparents, Lee and Shelia Proulx, Bruce and Sue LaMeyer,
Bonnie Reeves and Paul Pfromer; great grandparents, Carolyn Proulx,
Margaret Rogers, Virginia Houg; aunts and uncles, Heather (Mike)
Abrahamson, Leah (Brian) Funkhouser, Mike (Sami) LaMeyer, Matt LaMeyer, Sarah LaMeyer; cousins, Miranda, Brandon, Zachary, Maggie; many other family and special friends.
A
celebration of her life will be held at 11:00 a.m., Thursday, August
28, 2008 at Linwood Covenant Church, 6565 Viking Blvd.,
Linwood. Visitation will be 5:00-8:00 p.m., Wednesday at Mattson Funeral
Home, 343 North Shore Drive, Forest Lake and one hour prior to the
service at the church.
The following photo was used for her obituary....
Our assignments included meeting with the Pastor from our Church and discussing the service. Pulling together photos for the video and to display her favorite items and try and get some rest for the impossible week ahead.
We headed back home again after leaving the funeral home and had an appointment to meet with the Pastor later that afternoon.
Another thing on our immediate list was to visit m Grandma Carolyn. She was living at the Assisted Living at the Senior Housing Complex I managed at the time and Grandma had also lost her 1st child, Judy to what was believed to be meningitis. I will have a later post with Grandma's visit and the most valuable pieces of information we could have received in this tragedy.
When we returned home, the house was was sparkling. Even the landscaping rock project we were in the middle of had been completed. Our friends pulled through, once again.
Our friend Leah, also offered to take the boys shopping for school clothes and supplies. Were were supposed to do that over the weekend as school was starting the next week. We were WAY late in getting this done, and as it turns out, that was probably for the best. I would have been crushed to have to deal will all of her new school things. We also were supposed to have arranged for her obtian some equipment to play the drums in school and ironically we had not gotten to that either. The Lord works in mysterious ways. Anyhow.... Leah left with the boys. She also planned to get them clothes for the services. Meanwhile, we were preparing to meet with Pastor Norm and Youth Pastor, Jeremy Elseth from our church. We had taken a few moments to actually go into Hailee's bedroom and looked around a bit. One of the things that we found was a single page that had the lyrics of a song she had composed. It stopped us in our tracks. We could not believe the words we read on this page. They are as follows:
Love is hard to find
Music
Entry
verseli
"Finding you is hard but I know I can do it because I can belive it! Yeah
I know your there and I've known you've been there explaining words that only make sense when you say them. They sound so clear!
I hopeing this can end, I gotta find you so it can!
Cause then you know we can be together, Just you and me! Yeah
Chorus:
When your there you dissapeer and when your gone you're there! Sometimes I am so confused that I don't know what to do! Because love is hard to find".
Hailee LaMeyer
(note... all misspellings and grammar errors were her's and forever a part of this song).
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Whew! This was unreal. It seemed like some kind of premonition to us. It seemed so fitting and we just could not believe what we were reading. My mind went back to the car conversatin about God and Jesus. I was grateful and so very angry all at the same time!
When Pastor's Norm and Jeremy arrived, this is one of the things that we showed them. The too, were in awe of what they were reading. They immediately suggested it become a part fo the services, and so it was. It was the cover of the program at her funeral.
To this day, this song is framed and hangs in the entry of our home as a reminder of the precious gift se was to us, what she gave us and how much she meant to everyone she knew. Here is a photo of the original composition:
We also spent some time talking with Norm and Jeremy about Hailee as a person, giving them many details about her and her life. We told them about our loved ones, including the friends that had stood by us and continued to help us again and again. Our words about our friends reminded Pastor Norm of a bible story that would serve as a part of the groundwork for Hailee's funeral service. The story comes from John 11 and is about the death of Lazarus and how Martha and Mary were so very fortunate to have people around to help them. The verse that stood out to Norm was 17-19 and read:
"On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Behtany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother."
Pastor Norm referred to our friends as "Kitchen Friends". He said those are the type of friendships that are so similar to family it is hard to tell them apart. These friends come into your home, usually without knocking, go into your kitchen, open the fridge and help themselves to a diet coke-- no need to ask. These are the people in our life who do not need to ask permission and need not make apologies. His words stood out to us then and still do to this day. Our "Kitchen Friends" are simply..... amazing.
We spoke of the funeral service and immediately knew that we wanted it to be primarily music, a little scripture, and words about Hailee and who she was and what was important to her. We did not want a lot of text read, mainly expressing our faith through music. So we began to plan. We had a few more assignments. We needed to select music that we wanted and think about what we would want said. The boys and we were encouraged to write notes if we chose to be read aloud. We had a plan to follow up at the church in the next day or so to finalize the selections. Jeremy, missing Marcus and Justin on that first visit because they were shopping with Leah, promised to pick up the boys and spend some time with them. Both of the boys completed confirmation with Jeremy as their youth Pastor. Hailee would have begun confirmation classes that year.
Every single way we looked, people were blessings to us, helping us, warming our frozen hearts. Yet, with all of that love and warmth around us, the stone cold reality was still there. She died. 24 hours ago, she had died. How could we possible go on?
More to come,
Heidi
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