Doyel: Lauren McGlaughlin is here, alive in her family's memories from Muncie to Paris
Gregg DoyelThey can laugh now when they talk about Lauren. They can laugh because it has been nearly four years, and because some of these memories are funny. Like the way Lauren insisted on running track in middle school, a sprinter who knew she wasn’t terribly fast, or the way she’d walk into a Goodwill and rummage through the racks and leave with an armful of costumes for the Cowan High drama club.
When Lauren McGlaughlin’s mother and younger sisters get to talking about Lauren, they get going faster and faster, finishing each other’s sentences as they discuss memories like movie night.
“Every Tuesday,” says Jessica McGlaughlin, 18, a freshman at Ball State. “She’d go with our grandparents and—”
“And all her friends,” says Kristen McGlaughlin, 20, also attending Ball State. “She’d do this big show of getting ready and go to dinner and a movie because—
“Tuesday was cheaper than every other night,” says Allyson McGlaughlin, 49, and everyone’s giggling. That was Lauren, all right. So frugal, good luck getting her out of Goodwill.
“It was $5 at the AMC,” Kristen says, and the conversation is starting to slow.
“She kept going to those movies, until…” Jessica says, and now it’s so quiet, you could hear a tear drop.
“The last one was four weeks before she died,” Allyson said.
But she went to the show, didn’t she? Got herself gussied up, because that’s what Muncie's Lauren McGlaughlin did. She’d do makeup for her sisters, for friends, for the drama club. She made herself up one more time, for one more Tuesday night.
“I picked her up and put her in the car,” Allyson says. “Her friends took care of her wheelchair.”
By then Lauren had been to Paris. She’d seen the Eiffel Tower and Palace of Versailles. She’d heard a lone violin player outside the Cathedral of Notre Dame playing “A Thousand Years,” no lyrics sung, none needed. Lauren knew the song well.
The trip was Lauren's idea, one of 3,500 wishes granted since 1984 by the Indiana Wish organization. Four years later Lauren’s mom can talk about her daughter for an hour and hold it together, sustained by memories and the presence of Jessica and Kristen, but Allyson begins to break just once – when she talks about the trip to Paris, how Indiana Wish made it possible.
“I’m sorry,” she says as she pauses, trying to explain her gratitude for Indiana Wish.
Memories are what she has of Lauren, and it’s true what they say. Memories last a lifetime.
I will be brave
I will not let anything take away
What's standing in front of me
Every breath, every hour has come to this
Those are lyrics from “A Thousand Years,” a 2011 song by Christina Perri for “The Twilight Saga.”
Baylee loved that song.
Baylee Hilsabeck was her name, and she was one of those people Lauren McGlaughlin accumulated on her medical journey. They’d met at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota during the height of “Twilight,” a series of movies about irrepressible, immortal teenagers.
Baylee was from Missouri and a year older than Lauren, who could find common ground with anyone. She met one boyfriend at a hospital, and found a soulmate at Riley Hospital for Children in Kathleen Soller, a runner from Roncalli battling cancer. Kathleen and Lauren had the same artistic sensibilities, with Lauren applying the makeup and Kathleen painting henna all over Lauren’s bald head.
Doyel from 2017, on Kathleen Soller: Roncalli athlete runs one last race, for Audrey
Doyel on Tyler Trent: Young man from Carmel fought cancer and inspired a country
When Baylee, 16, died in 2017, Lauren couldn’t hear “A Thousand Years” anymore. When the song came on inside the house, one of her sisters would turn it off. Too soon.
The trip to Paris was two years later, and it came together fast. The cancer, which had come and gone – Lauren rang the bell in victory after finishing chemo treatments in 2017 – was back in 2018. Synovial sarcoma, it’s called, a rare but aggressive attack on the body’s soft tissue. Allyson called Indiana Wish and told them about Lauren’s desire to see Paris, and she put it bluntly:
“If we can’t do this pretty soon,” she told them, “we’ll never be able to do it.”
Airline tickets, hotels, the Louvre, a cruise on the river Seine … any idea what it takes to get a family of six – the three sisters, brother Connor Auten and their parents, Allyson and Calvin – from Muncie to Paris? The girls didn’t even have passports.
Indiana Wish didn’t blink.
“They put it together … I don’t even know if it was a month,” Allyson says of Indiana Wish. “They’re the best people.”
A pause as she collects herself.
“I’ve done enough crying for a lifetime,” Allyson says.
Her daughters fill the silence that follows.
“Lauren liked the grandiosity of it, the romance, the magic, the illusion of Paris,” says Jessica.
“It was incredible,” says Kristen.
“It was the best trip in the world,” says Allyson.
How to be brave?
How can I love when I'm afraid to fall?
But watching you stand alone
All of my doubt suddenly goes away somehow
Paris wasn’t Lauren’s first choice for a wish. Don’t get her sisters started on that, or they’ll just … well, too late.
“Her first wish was a private concert by Ed Sheeran,” Allyson says, and Kristen and Jessica start giggling. “Absolutely not happening. Pick something else.”
“Paris fits her very well,” Jessica says, finally.
Says Kristen: “I want to add – not to interrupt you Jessica.”
“Go ahead,” says Jessica.
“Lauren had this dream car – a white shiny malibu LT,” Kristen says. “I was talking to her about her wish, and she was like, ‘Man, I really want to ask for this car, but I want the family to have something too.’ She chose to ask for the Paris trip purely for the family. Because she knew everyone was struggling. She wanted us to be part of it. It was a really, really special trip, and one of the only highlights of this whole experience.
“Us four kids all had our own private area, and parents had theirs. I felt like we were on a little fun sibling adventure, bopping around through the streets of Paris. My favorite thing was we were all there.”
Says Jessica: “We had a whole week to not stress out about money, don’t stress about school, don’t stress about her cancer. We had that whole week to get out of that mindset and that stress and see the world for what it is. It left a lasting impression on me. It made me realize how important experiences are, not material things.”
Kristen: “We got off the plane early morning in France and found our hotel and then walked around. Seeing the Eiffel Tower for first time as a family – I knew it was Lauren’s dream. Standing there looking at the Eiffel Tower in France, all together, was my favorite moment.”
Allyson: “Lauren’s favorite was Versailles.”
“I won’t forget the musician outside Notre Dame,” Jessica says. “He had a violin and he was playing ‘A Thousand Years’ and we were all listening.”
The movie got it wrong, of course. Nobody’s immortal, not even an irrepressible teenager. Lauren McGlaughlin died Feb. 21, 2020, shortly after turning 18, with one last wish: Instead of flowers she asked for donations of makeup, scarves and hats to Riley Hospital, care of “Women for Riley.”
After Lauren’s family brought home the donations from her funeral – boxes had been set up her school and church – the bins filled the hallway and led to what the folks at Riley called “The Lauren McGlaughlin Bold, Bald and Beautiful Project” for kids like Lauren, who lost her hair but not her hope.
Back in Muncie, Lauren’s family has a thousand stories they can tell, stories of movie nights and makeup and Goodwill, of Paris and Versailles and a violin outside Notre Dame. No, teenagers aren’t immortal. But the memories are.
Darling, don't be afraid, I have loved you for a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
How you can help
This is the first installment of IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel’s annual holiday series on Indiana Wish, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that has granted more than 3,500 wishes to state children, ages 3-18, diagnosed with a life-threatening or terminal illness. The average cost of a wish is $12,000. To help support Indiana Wish, visit www.indianawish.org/donate/.