She died, at 10, from something her parents never saw coming. Is there a silver lining?
Their little Layla came back to them, they believe, through the clouds.
As Matt and Jenny Sigmund sat quietly on their front porch in the Fenton Dell neighborhood in Harrisburg just after noon this past Wednesday — at very close to the exact time their 10-year-old girl suddenly had gone limp in Jenny’s arms one week earlier, when her brain began to bleed — a brilliant, blinding sun finally emerged, after days of figurative and literal gloominess.
I hope this is a sign of God, Jenny remembers thinking. I hope this is his way of saying “I’ve got her. She’s doing fine. She’s earned her wings.”
Jenny snapped a photo of the sun with her cellphone and posted it on Facebook, and within minutes, someone contacted them to point out the tiny aqua-colored spot in the lower half of the frame.
“She sends me a link explaining what a blue orb is,” Matt said, “and according to the link, a blue orb is a pure spirit that can’t take its form as a human because there’s not enough energy there. Basically, it’s an angel. And man, since we read that, I’ve just keep looking at it over and over and over. It’s absolutely incredible. There’s no question that’s her.”
The Sigmunds are doing everything they possibly can right now to stay positive and hopeful in the wake of the loss of their daughter Layla, who had no known prior health issues but died a week ago last Thursday after suffering a massive brain bleed.
Though Matt said they’re “not really overly religious people,” they’ve been looking for and finding what appear to be signs everywhere.
Though they struggle to block out the images of the last 26 or so hours of Layla’s life, they’ve been trying hard to focus on all the wonderfully happy moments in the 10-1/2 years they had with Layla that had come before.
Though they’ve been so preoccupied that they haven’t even begun to start to thank all the people they want to thank, they’ve been buoyed by a supportive community that has rallied behind a GoFundMe campaign that has amassed more than $17,000 to help them cover the costs of the care Layla received at Levine Children’s Hospital, and for a funeral and a celebration of life.
And though they are devastated by the fact that they can’t have a funeral or a celebration of life right now — due to restrictions on gatherings as part of the ongoing effort to slow the coronavirus outbreak — they’ve been filled with joy by the idea that their child’s death very well may have saved several others’ lives.
Pug love and precociousness
Matt and Jenny gave their second daughter the name Layla on Sept. 27, 2009, very shortly before she was welcomed into the world.
It was a nod to Laila Ali, the daughter of Muhammad Ali, who they both viewed as a strong, independent woman. Or, more precisely, Matt thought, just like Jenny: brown, brainy and beautiful. (Jenny is Filipino, a mechanical engineer who today has her own consulting business, and a former Carolina Panthers cheerleader.)
As a baby, though, the adjective they would have used to describe Layla most often was chubby. So they affectionately nicknamed her “Squishy Tushy,” and it stuck. (It’s even mentioned in her obituary.)
From a young age, her best friend was her sister Violet — older by just under a year and a half — and the two would spend hours in the backyard together absorbed in an endless array of make-believe adventures.
Somewhere along the way, Layla also developed an inexplicable infatuation with pugs. The family has a boxer named Bronx and has never had a pug, but for whatever reason, Layla plastered her bedroom walls with posters and calendars and artwork of the wrinkly-faced breed of dogs. “They’re so ugly that they’re cute,” Matt remembers her saying, whenever they asked her why she liked them so much.
Even into her double-digit years, at an age when many young girls start to create some distance from their parents, Layla seemed to pull hers in as closely as she could. She seemed happiest when she was curled up in front of the fireplace out back watching TV with her dad, or while “bungling” (her word for snuggling) with her mom while listening to Christmas music (yes, year-round — her choice) every night before bed.
At the same time, she could be alarmingly precocious. For one, Layla already had decided she would study marine biology in college at UNC Wilmington (where her older cousin Kinsley Sigmund is now in grad school).
Another recent example Matt shared: The Saturday before she died, Layla and Violet were in the grocery store with their dad when Matt and Violet gently started poking fun at the way someone in front of them was dressed. Layla didn’t laugh. When they got out into the car, Matt saw the person walking out, and pointed him out again.
“Layla said, ‘Dad, what if that’s how he feels comfortable?’ ... She was dead serious. It almost upset her that I was laughing. But I stopped immediately, and I looked at her and I said, ‘Sweetheart, you’re right. ... If that’s the way he feels comfortable, then who are we to tell him not to dress like that?’”
“That kid,” he continued, “was special.”
Layla was just starting to blossom into a beautiful dancer on one of the competitive teams at Dance Fusion of Harrisburg, after working up the courage to overcome her stage fright. She was in the gifted program as a fourth-grader at Harrisburg Elementary School, where pretty much every teacher she ever had fell in love with her.
And then, in what seemed like an instant, that special kid was gone.
‘We would miss her so much’
Since her school had closed because of the coronavirus, Layla was at home last Wednesday, hanging with her sister and their friend Lily while Jenny worked in her home office. They spent the morning reading, making cookie dough and playing on their iPads. Nothing out of the ordinary.
But around noontime, Jenny said, Layla came into her office complaining about a headache and stomach ache. She went to lie down to rest. About 15 minutes later, when Jenny went in to check on her and ask if eating some lunch might make her feel better, Layla jumped up and started vomiting.
The last thing Layla said was that she couldn’t focus on anything. Then she collapsed.
Jenny had to administer CPR to her daughter as she waited for paramedics to arrive. “The rest,” she said, “was a blur.”
At the hospital, medical staff put her on a ventilator, but she never regained consciousness.
At 1:43 p.m. last Thursday, Layla died while surrounded by her family.
Doctors have told them it was either a brain aneurysm or a cerebral arteriovenous malformation. The former is rare in children, while the latter — basically an abnormal tangle of arteries and veins, often found in the brain, that disrupts normal blood flow — never would have been detected without an MRI, and with no previous existing health concerns, she’d never had one.
“I just kept telling her that we loved her and we would miss her,” Jenny said. “I told her to have fun playing with Grammy (Matt’s mother, who also died suddenly, due to an aortic rupture six years ago at age 62) and that we would see her soon.
“I also told her to let us know how she was doing every once in a while since we would miss her so much.”
Finding comfort where they can
They believe she’s done that, at least once already, via the sunshine.
But there’ve been other signs, too, they say.
This past Saturday, after a meeting at the funeral home, Jenny wanted to go shopping for spring decor — something to brighten and freshen up the house — though deep down it also probably was something she thought could help take her mind off of her grief.
“And we go to this one store,” she said, “and I’m looking at throw pillows, and I picked up this pillow that I liked. I just liked the pattern and the colors. And I’ll be danged ... it (the label) said ‘Layla Grayce Collection.’ I mean, it just actually said it on there: Layla.”
“We bought every damn pillow,” Matt said, laughing. “I didn’t care, man. I had to have ’em all.”
“I mean, Layla,” Jenny said. “The Layla Collection. How could we not buy them?”
On top of that, they now feel that there’s some meaning wrapped up for them in the number 19, partly because Layla was at home with her family when it happened instead of at school because of COVID-19, and because she died on the 19th of March.
Of course, this all might seem a little crazy to a hardened cynic, right? The blue orbs and the throw pillows and the numerology? But in the wake of unimaginable tragedy, it would seem completely appropriate for grieving parents to take comfort wherever they can find it.
And two things comfort Matt and Jenny Sigmund more than any:
One is the thought of their loss bringing families closer together. It’s been big news in the suburb of Harrisburg (population: 16,000-ish), and Matt said he believes “people are holding their kids tighter tonight because we’ve lost ours. They’re telling their children they love them a little bit more today than they did last week. They’re spending more time together” — partly because of the stay-at-home order, he admits — but “they’re spending more time together as a family and loving and enjoying every moment, like every family should. Because it’s not guaranteed that they’ll always be there. So the passing of one 10-year-old child is helping our entire community.”
The other is the thought of the families of the children who now have Layla’s organs. She gave a heart, a liver and two kidneys. “I am so overjoyed that she could do that,” Matt said. In his mind’s eye, he said, he sees “a mother, and a father, and grandparents, all up in that hospital, holding their baby today. ... I mean, imagine the joy that their families are feeling right now. It’s got to be incredible. And it’s because of my daughter.”
(Oh, by the way, he said: April 19 marks the beginning of National Pediatric Transplant Week.)
‘What she would have wanted’
On Friday, Matt and Jenny collected Layla’s ashes and brought them home.
There’s still one significant thing standing in the way of them truly starting to work toward finding a sense of closure, and a true sense of peace: that big old celebration of life that they’d like to have with all of their family and friends, with anyone and everyone who ever loved her.
But they know that day will come, and they know what they’ll do.
“We hiked every Sunday at Reedy Creek Park,” Matt said. “It’s got a big, massive lake there, with a massive field going down ... to the lake. I mean, what better (place) to have families, children, and their parents bring a blanket. Let’s all go out there, sit on that field, and just spend a day together. You know, watch those kids run around with no shoes on. Let ’em hike through the woods. The stuff that we love to do that is so close and dear to us. What better way to celebrate her than to create a day of celebration for other families?”
“(To have) everybody just spend the day out there ... celebrate her life,” Jenny added. “That’s what she would have wanted.”
They can picture that day in their minds.
It’s been cloudy for days. It’s still cloudy that morning. But everyone shows up, parks their cars, walks the path down to the field, puts down their blankets.
And then the sun comes out.
This story was originally published March 27, 2020 at 1:37 PM.
