Family remembers mom killed in flood
BEAUMONT — A 3-year-old girl with a pink backpack, found clinging to her mother’s floating body. The haunting scene made headlines across the country three weeks ago as Hurricane Harvey battered Southeast Texas.
By Saturday, the floodwaters had long since subsided. Most of the national news crews had left town. And, finally, Collette Sulcer’s family found time to grieve.
“There has been so much focus on how she died,” pastor Delbert A. Mack Sr. said as mourners filtered into Cathedral of Faith Baptist Church. “I want to encourage you to focus on how she lived.”
How she lived.
Medrick Lee’s mind flashed to 1979. He was 29 and living with his aunt and young cousin. Three-year-old Collette, an only child, was like a kid sister. A daughter, almost. She called him “Bo.” Bo remembered how she’d loved to tag along with him back then. How she’d insisted on sitting in the front seat of his car, sandwiched between him and his girlfriend. How the toddler had shouted, “Eat her up, Bo,” when she’d seen them kissing. How the tiny girl had punched him, another time, when he’d told her she had to stay home.
“The hardest I’ve ever been hit in my life,” Bo said during the funeral, a smile spreading across his tear-stained face,
“was when I got punched by a 3-year-old girl. That was my cousin Collette.”
She got older. And kinder. She was 20 when her mother — her best friend, she’d always said — died of a freak asthma attack. She changed her college major after that, Bo said, and decided to become a nurse. A nurse might have been able to help her mom. A nurse, she figured, could help save others. ‘Saying her prayers’
Nearly two decades flew by before Collette’s new best friend was born. Little Jordyn Grace. She loved her daughter more than anything.
As floodwaters swept through Beaumont on Aug. 29, Collette loaded the girl into a car seat and tried to escape to higher ground. But the water caught up with them along an Interstate 10 service road. She must have gotten out and tried to carry Jordyn to safety. Must have been swept up in the current.
“Mama was saying her prayers.” That’s what Jordyn had told a relative that night, hours after rescuers spotted her pink backpack bobbing in brown water, and plucked her aboard. Mother and child had drifted a half-mile from their car. Nobody knows for sure how long Collette had been dead. Nobody knows what she’d gone through to make sure her daughter lived.
On Saturday, cousin Bo’s hands trembled as he stood next to her casket and read from 1 Corinthians: “A mother’s love always protects. A mother’s love always trusts. A mother’s love always perseveres. A mother’s love never fails.”
The program in his hand called the gathering a “Celebration of Life.” Its pages were filled with photos of Jordyn, whose face has now been seen by millions. The little girl who survived. The miracle amid tragedy. Thanking God
Different thoughts rush to mind when Bo looks at her dimpled cheeks: She looks like her mother, he thinks, when she was 3.
He thinks about how close he and Collette had been back then. About how distant they’d grown since 2009, when his mother died. How, just a couple of months ago, he’d wondered how his cousin was doing. How he’d put off giving her a call.
When he looks at Jordyn, he thanks God that she survived.
And he regrets not telling his baby cousin how much he loved her before it was too late. mike.hixenbaugh@chron.com twitter.com/mike_hixenbaugh