Shortly after Cord’s accident a dear family member sent Melanie and me journals and encouraged us to write to help deal with grief.  I may at some point utilize it, but for now, this blog on ForCord.com will be my outlet.  These are words and thoughts that need released and this is the venue for that to occur.

With the understanding that not everyone knows the details of the early morning hours of March 20^th, 2021, the goal with this entry is to provide them.  As I suspect will be the case moving forward, many of these posts will be difficult to write and perhaps to read.  They are what they are, and they are my recollections and interpretations.  Many will recall events differently which is normal and will meet with no arguments from me. 

Cord finished his master’s degree in social work in August 2020.  He moved back in with us when his apartment lease ended in August and within 2 weeks had secured a job with a community mental health agency in Austin.  We moved him back to Austin in early October and he settled into his new routine.  He came home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and we did not see him again (other than FaceTime) until March 18^th.  He came home that Thursday afternoon and worked virtually on Friday the 19^th.  Cord’s twin brother Blake was home as well, having accepted a job in Fort Worth and was transitioning from College Station.  It was great having them both under the roof, if only for a couple of days.

Melanie and I left home about 4:30 that Friday to buy groceries, which is our weekly routine.  Cord let us know he was going to spend the evening with friends from Kaufman, a normal event most every time he was home.  He was gone by the time we got back.  Shortly after we went to bed that night, we heard the door alarm chirp indicating someone was coming in the house.  I assumed it was Cord and went back to sleep.

At 1:26 AM, Melanie’s phone which was bedside rang, awakening us both.  It was Blake, telling us, “It’s Cord, you all need to get over here.”  In the fog that accompanies being startled awake, we hastily threw on clothes, and I called him back.  I do not recall the exact conversation, but the gist was Cord had been in an accident and we needed to get to the scene.  The location was about a mile from our house as the crow flies.  As we pulled away from the house, both of us stunned, scared and shocked I recall praying aloud, “JESUS PLEASE LET CORD BE OKAY.”  I may have repeated those words multiple times.  In the few minutes it took to arrive at the scene I had called my sister and brother-in-law and they were on their way as well. 

The accident happened on a Farm to Market Road just before it Ts into another road.  When we arrived, the road was blocked by sheriff department vehicles and the local fire department equipment.  We parked on the roadside unable to see Cord’s car.  Blake and a deputy sheriff were waiting in the road and stopped us from going to where the car was located sitting in the ditch.

We were informed we had to wait for the highway patrolman to arrive before we could be told anything.  We both asked where Cord was, if he had already been transported to the hospital, and a myriad of other questions, all of which went unanswered.  More calls were made to family and friends and within a short time Christy and Tim (my sister and brother-in-law), Leanne and Leland (Mel’s sister and brother-in-law), our oldest son Dylan and his girlfriend Emily, our pastor Brent and his wife Julie, and our good friend Mike and Becki Memmer were all standing on the road with us.  There was no indication of any activity on the road near Cord’s car.  No sign of EMT’s or the presence of an ambulance.  I fought the urge to allow my mind to go places I could not yet fathom. 

Sometime after 2:30am a state trooper (I do not have permission to use his name and have chosen to not do so) and his partner approached us from the direction of Cord’s car.  I asked him where our son was.  He suggested we go to our car and sit down to talk.  With our family surrounding us, he said with kindness surpassing the moment, “I’m sorry, your son didn’t make it.”

So, there we were at what felt like the end.  Leanne drove us home.  Sitting in the back seat I wondered why God had not answered the simple prayer I had voiced as we left the house.  Not only was Cord not okay, but he was also gone.  The answer would not come that night.  In fact, it was several weeks later while continuing to question why the prayer had gone unanswered that the answer arrived.  It was simple and I sensed it in that part of my being where assurance resides. ‘He IS okay, he’s with ME now.’ 

 The end of Cord’s life on earth was indeed a new beginning for him, and for us as well.

A follow up discussion with the state trooper was arranged for the week following Cord’s accident.  Unbeknownst to Melanie, I had asked for the interview to coincide with her being gone with Leanne to receive her COVID vaccination. I did not know what to expect from the conversation and did not want her to have to hear whatever detail he was going to provide.  All we knew up to that point was the accident only involved Cord’s vehicle.  I had walked the accident site the morning of Saturday the 20^th with a good friend who is a law enforcement officer.  He interpreted the signs he could see, but details were few.

The trooper and I sat at the dining room table, and he asked what he called routine questions.  Had Cord been taking any prescription medications?  How had his mood been?  Had he been having difficulty sleeping?  He explained he was trying to get a sense for what might have caused Cord to lose control of the car.  Here is what he said he knew after reconstructing the accident.  He made the point to say that Cord’s phone was in his pocket with his wallet.  He was not on his phone when the accident occurred.

I was tempted at this point, and had in fact, typed out a long paragraph with all the details of the accident.  I erased them because they were not meant to be the focal point of this piece.  If you would like to know I will tell you.  But let’s do so in private.

The trooper explained that the only contributing factor he could identify for certain was excess speed.  For those of us who had ridden in a car driven by Cord over the past 7 years, that was unsurprising.  Cord always drove fast.  It did not matter if it was the streets in Austin, rural roads, or the interstate, he had a lead foot.  After communicating more about the accident, the trooper said the following: “based on what I can determine at this time, the official cause of the accident will be listed as Failure to Maintain Lane Integrity.”  I want to acknowledge that the trooper was professional, compassionate and a credit to the difficult task to which he was assigned.

Failure to maintain lane integrity.  Must admit, I had never heard that phrase.  It seems simple enough – Cord did not stay in his lane.  He did not abide by the markers (rules, guidelines, boundaries) that had been established.  While mulling those five words over and over and trying to figure out how something so seemingly simple could have such dire consequence it became obvious:  Cord had rarely, if EVER, cared much for the boundaries (or lanes) others had decided he should maintain.

Cord was born a couple hours after Blake.  Leave the womb now that he had extra room to get comfy?  No thanks.  In fact, he was literally pulled out (more on that in another post and sorry to be graphic.)  He rarely if ever wore clothes as a little guy.  We have lots of pictures of Cord in nothing but a diaper.  Oh, and if you were looking for him, he was likely standing on top of something.  The kitchen table, the back of the couch, the end tables, THE CAR parked in the driveway!  He wanted to see the world from a view that being < 3 feet tall at the time did not afford.

Then there was his palate. Cord ate chicken nuggets, French fries, and cheese dip.  Period, end of list.  This is not an exaggeration for effect.  That was the sum total of everything he would eat, though on occasion he might eat a potato chip and would eventually add Oreo’s and pizza to round things out.  When he started pre-Kindergarten at Kaufman Christian School we would microwave chicken nuggets and put them in a thermos for him to have for lunch every day.  He did not care that all the other kids were eating a wide variety of foods, including things like vegetables and fruits.  He ate what he wanted to eat.

Cord was born left-handed.  All the other kids were right-handed.  So, he decided to be right-handed.  His penmanship was only slightly better when he completed his master’s degree than when he finished learning to write the alphabet.  Why would he care to be something he did not want to be?  In high school, he could not really see the need to get up and go to school if he already knew the material.  Seemed to him his time could be spent doing other things.  All those pesky lanes people kept trying to force him into.  They just did not work for him.

All that changed when Cord moved to Austin and enrolled at the University of Texas as a freshman.  For the first time he was aware that he could choose his lanes.  He was able to decide how wide or narrow his path.  The thing I worried about the most became an absolute strength.  The kid who only went to school his senior year of high school because attendance was compulsory and at some point, missing too many days = not graduating, suddenly never missed a class.  Again, no exaggeration here.  The fall semester of his 2^nd year at UT he was living off campus and rode a shuttle bus back and forth to his apartment every day.  Combine that with an 8am, Monday through Friday Introduction to Italian class and I was certain a drop was in the offing.  No way was this kid who stayed up late every night playing computer games going to make it to that class daily!  Imagine Melanie and my surprise when he came home for Christmas and handed his mom an expensive bottle of olive oil.  His Italian professor had awarded it to him for being one of only two students in the section to attend every single class, at 8am Monday through Friday, every week for the entire semester!  He was in the lane of his choosing; there is no other explanation.

After the trooper left the house that Monday afternoon those five words reverberated in my head.  Seemingly so benign – failure to maintain lane integrity – they were akin to ‘failure to not drop soup on my tie.’ Yet, it is what brought an end to Cord’s time on earth.  Words have power and I had to find a way to take away the power those words held on my life.  So, instead of focusing on them, I focused on Cord.  The magnificent little guy with the mischievous grin.  The brother who would bow up in a heartbeat for Blake and Dylan.  The teenager so badly misunderstood by his dad (who believed lanes had to be maintained at all costs).  The undergrad with the nose ring (which cemented my understanding of him finding his own lanes).  The driven, purposeful life that loved other people with a ferocity not-often seen.  The burning desire to help those who society cast aside.  The uncanny ability to discern genuine from fake.

There were truly no lanes that Cordell would allow to contain him, and I refuse to allow the events of March 20^th to subtract from the beauty that fact afforded his life and those his life touched.

It likely does not take much in the way of imagination to understand that losing a child causes an avalanche of being overwhelmed.  The first hours and days after Cord’s accident were a fog of activity.  People made coffee at 3am.  Laundry was done while the coffee was brewing.  Calls had to be made.  Lots of calls.  The words I forced out of my mouth into the phone stuck in my throat time and time again, causing me to gasp and break down.  I hated having to deliver such sudden and overwhelmingly awful news to family, friends and colleagues.  I had to try and reach people before they heard some other way.  I needed to somehow cushion the emotional turmoil I was about to cause.  It was an overwhelming task, on top of overwhelming emotion that I could barely understand, much lesson process.

Within 8 hours of Cord’s passing our house was a beehive of activity.  Food started to arrive and would not stop for weeks.  We were literally overwhelmed by food.  Our friend Mike told a local Mexican food restaurant he needed fajitas to serve 40.  They must have thought he said 400.  We still, to this day have fajita meat in the freezer.  Our family and church family showed up and provided for everything we might need.  Brother-in-law Tim and good friend Becki created a list of tasks we would need to do immediately and in the long term regarding the final plans for Cord.  They produced 3 pages of lists that we could have never thought of in those days.  Their thoroughness was, at first, overwhelming.  “How in the world can we do all that?”  One by one the items were completed.  The last one on our list was finished the week of June 21^st when we ordered Cord’s headstone for his grave.  The finality of that task was, you guessed it, overwhelming.

By Sunday afternoon March 21^st our long driveway was full of cars.  People were planting flowers, weeding flower beds, and generally making a spring season full of honey-do’s disappear in one afternoon.  Old friends showed up to hug us and tell us how sorry they were.  The world’s best peanut butter cookies were delivered and devoured in one afternoon.  A second plate was delivered the next day (thanks, Christine!).  The busy-ness allowed for intermittent relief from the life numbing grief.  Cord’s girlfriend, Elizabeth and her dad came out and we were able to spend an extended time with just the two of them with Blake and Dylan.  Seeing her overwhelmed both Melanie and me.  Honestly, it still does Melanie.  She brought so much happiness to Cord, and we are overwhelmed by the grief of knowing she will move forward in life without him, when they clearly had planned to move forward together.

In a purely human sense, the unfairness of Cord’s death overwhelmed me the most.  He had just hit his stride.  The happiest year of his life had just occurred, and he had big plans for his future.  It was worse at night.  I have, for many years, been asleep within 5 minutes of head to pillow every night.  Now I laid in the dark and stared at the ceiling, asking God how something so unfair could happen.  These kinds of things happened to other people, not us!  Every time I closed my eyes the mental images of Cord’s final moments on earth overwhelmed my brain.  Melanie would lay beside me and sob.  Blake had to suddenly consider a wedding in 10 weeks without his best man.  Dylan probably talked to Cord more than any other person on earth.  Now who would he talk to?

The visitation on Tuesday evening lasted 2 hours and the sheer number of people who came to our little town to show us how much they loved us was overwhelming (hope you are not too tired of that word at this point).  6 colleagues from my work a decade ago in Dallas came out.  Probably every person Melanie had ever worked with were there.  Mark and Francine and their daughter Jocelyn came up from San Antonio.  John, who likes to point out he was once on our boat with the twins (it is an inside joke) drove over from near the big airport.  At the end of the 2-hour window we asked everyone other than family to leave the chapel.  At that point we opened the casket to say our final goodbyes.  It was much needed and a moment that will stay with us for our lifetimes.

Cord’s burial and memorial service were on Wednesday, March 24^th.  The morning was surreal.  How do you cognitively deal with burying a child?  Our pastor (who had walked this very path himself with the loss of his daughter) helped much that morning.  Seeing Cord’s friends who we asked to carry his casket reminded us how much he loved them, and they returned the affection for him.  We were overwhelmed with what they were forced to shoulder.  At those moments, being a parent overwhelms the grief and you start trying to protect others.  Blake had Brooke and Dylan had Emily at their sides.  Attending to the details and caring for others allowed an escape from the feelings of those moments.

Walking into our church’s Worship Center for the service was an overwhelming experience.  The large number of attendees during the waning days of a pandemic caused me to shudder.  The message was overwhelmingly on point.  Brent absolutely nailed it – Cord learned to love big because of his faith.  He reminded us, that our good Shepherd had walked this path previously and would guide us in the coming days.  He was right of course.  As we headed up the steps to exit the church I looked up and to my left and saw two people that literally caused me to stop.  Matt and Darlene had driven from Tulsa just for the service.  Darlene’s husband (and Matt’s dad) was my friend Jim.  I never expected them to make it and I was overwhelmed by their kindness.  Just 9 months previously I had spoken at Jim’s memorial service in Tulsa.  I was speechless as I reached them and stopped the entire family leaving up the steps while I hugged them both.

In the next few days, most folks would go back to their day-to-day existence.  Work, family and civic responsibilities returned.  Carrie stayed all week.  I don’t think Christy and Tim ever left.  On Friday the 26^th, Dylan, Blake and I drove to Austin and cleaned out Cord’s apartment.  People were kind, the work was accomplished in a short timeframe, and we were back in Kaufman before it was dark.  The entire experience was a mixture of sadness, grief, and relief in having his ‘stuff’ back at our place.  He would never be back.  That thought overwhelms me as I sit and type this.  However, his stuff being here is oddly comforting. 

As a family we are learning how to cope with the void in our lives.  As a friend told us, we were a 5-spoke wheel for 23 years, and now we must figure out how to function as a 4-spoke wheel.  Waves of grief overwhelm Melanie and me at different times.  Mine usually starts with a constriction in my throat.  In these days of non-stop video conference calls, I simply turn off my camera and mute my microphone until it passes. 

The loss of our beloved son, Cordell Jackson Reynolds is overwhelmingly painful.  It was Saturday March 20^th, and it is now 6 months later.  I do not suspect that will ever change.  It will hopefully be less of a day-to-day reality, but it abides.

The support of our family, friends, church, colleagues, and complete strangers (we will discuss the scholarship fund in the future) is overwhelmingly encouraging.  I am unable to comprehend how people make it through something like this without a deep and personal faith and having the kindnesses we were afforded. 

We were, are, and will be overwhelmed.  Some days that is a negative and some days that is a positive.  In the midst of them, we are overwhelmingly grateful that we were chosen to be Cord’s mom and dad. 

When Melanie and I learned that we were having twins we were told one was a boy and one a girl.  The girl was to be named Mayce – a family name from Melanie’s family.  Mayce ended up being Blake.  That’s a long story and not the subject of this piece.

Melanie’s dad, Jerry was the youngest of four children born to Milton and Elma Cordell.  He had two older sisters and an older brother.  His brother, Uncle Bubba had one daughter, and Jerry and Glenda had two daughters.  So, the Cordell surname was ending with their generation.  Because of that, we decided to name baby boy twin Cordell.  His middle name, Jackson was my grandfather’s middle name. 

In most major metropolitan areas, names don’t really carry much connection.  However, growing up in Kaufman, Texas, where Cordell Farm & Ranch Store has been in operation for 43 years everyone knows Cordell’s. 

“The store” was a large piece of all 3 of our son’s lives.  Every day after school they would stop in to see MeeMee and Pop.  As they grew older, they rode on the forklift with Johnny, or climbed up in the semi with Uncle Leland.  Once they were teenagers, they started loading feed and whatever else needed to be done.  Of the three, Cord ended up spending the most time at the family business.  He absolutely loved answering the phone and saying, “Cordell’s this is Cordell” then waiting while the caller tried to figure out what they had just heard.  We like to think Cord inherited his love of a good conversation from his grandfather.  Jerry never met a stranger, and Cord was the exact same.

One of the reasons Melanie and I decided to live in and raise our boys in Kaufman was the exposure they had to all our immediate family.  Both Melanie and I grew up in small towns full of relatives.  We wanted that for our sons.  Since I’m not from Kaufman, the last name Reynolds didn’t carry any impact.  However, when people started to put together the connection between the Reynolds’ boys and the Cordell family, expectations were heightened.  More than once a teacher or school administrator said, “Oh, I know your grandparents and went to school with your aunt Leanne and your mom!”  That’s what we wanted, though I am not certain the boys were always thrilled with that response.

Cord heard it the most.  On more than one occasion I reminded him that everything he did, both positively and negatively, reflected on the family name, and more importantly on the reputation his grandparents had established in our little community.  It was likely a responsibility he would have chosen to not carry from time to time, but he did.  In fact, from October-April, you would find him in a Cordell Farm and Ranch Store hoodie every day.  (Most of his newest hoodies are now with Elizabeth, and we love that.)

Every indication we have is that once Cord moved to Austin those well learned, small town expectations stayed with him.  He found a barber that was from east Texas who shockingly new about Cordell’s feed store.  He literally could not get away from the name, even if he chose to.  We don’t believe he ever wanted to.

Obviously, Melanie and I expected Cordell (and the name) to live long after we did.  It didn’t work out that way, but we believe the legacy Cord’s established in his short 23 years will live on in the lives of his friends and colleagues.  In his own way, he made sure the name will live on.  In fact, through the Cordell Reynolds Endowed Excellence Fund at UT, his name will be remembered and spoken for generations to come.  Probably the best most of us can hope for is to be remembered by our grandchildren, maybe, if we are lucky our great-grandchildren.  Cordell will be known for many, many years after we are all gone.  Melanie and I could have never hoped for anything more when we chose his name.

The sun rises, and the sun sets.  Walmart grocery runs are on Friday’s.  Football season takes forever to arrive, and then is over quickly.  The school year starts, the school year ends.  The grass turns green, the trees bud, and then the pattern reverses.  Grass turns brown, leaves fall off.  Little kids go out and back in 40 times per day.  (All the parents who have ever said, “IN OR OUT, PICK ONE” nod while you read.)  Not so little kids leave for school in the morning and come back in the door at the end of the day.  Bigger kids tend to leave shortly after getting back home to hang out with friends and come back in sometime around curfew.  Then, before you can blink, they walk out the door headed to college.  They walk back in on holidays, or when the clean clothes run out, or the cafeteria food just doesn’t come close to moms.   So, what happens when the rhythm of the comfortably predictable pattern is interrupted?

In February 2021 we had a once-per-hundred-year weather event in north Texas.  We experienced at or below zero-degree temperatures for 5+ days.  Snow and ice were thick, and everything shut down.  Pipes burst, and homes were without power for an extended time.  Prior to the freeze, some of the trees on our five acres had started to bud out.  Two of them did not survive the deep freeze.  So that rhythm – trees turn green then lose their leaves, ceased.  Things happen.  Most of the time it’s possible to shrug and move on – to adjust to the new normal.

Cord walked out of our house, like he had done thousands of times before for the last time on March 20^th.  It was so routine, such a known that neither Melanie nor I gave it much thought.  I expected to get up early on Saturday and grab a cup of coffee and walk outside to see his car in the circular drive behind Blake’s truck.  It is what our life was.  It is how we existed.  He walked out the door, and at some point, always walked back in.  But, as you all know, he didn’t this time.  Unlike a tree not growing new leaves, this alteration to the rhythm of our life changed who we are.

I am, by nurture, a worrier.  Anyone who knew my Aunt Sally understands where it originated.  When Dylan called from the side of Interstate 35 in the fall of 2017 to tell us he had been involved in a wreck, I wasn’t surprised, I had been expecting it!  It is how we worriers live.  There were way too many of those calls from the three boys over the years.  Dylan was just the first.  Every time any of the three boys would leave home to drive back to college, I would agonize for every minute they took longer to check in than I thought they should.  Going out into the drive to meet them when they came home was about excitement to see them and relief that they had arrived, safely.  Even with 50 years of worrying experience, I was wholly unprepared for the foundation shaking realization that Cord would never again open the door to our house.

So, what do you do when your life’s rhythm is torn apart?  That’s not a rhetorical question, that’s a desire to understand how to regain some semblance of normalcy.  That question does not indicate a lack of belief in a sovereign God.  Neither is it meant to imply that Melanie and I are incapable of enjoying life.  We do.  Dylan, Blake, Emily and Brooke provide great joy.  However, life is simply different.  Like a clothes washer that is out of balance, our life rhythm is as well.

I am starting the process of cutting down those two trees this weekend.  Perhaps there will be lessons to learn.  Perhaps this period is transitory.  Perhaps just getting up every morning and going to bed every night will help reaffirm the familiarity of life’s rhythms.  It has not done so, yet. 

The title is deceiving.  Technically Cord was not any child’s uncle.  He was, however, a lot of kids’ favorite big person.  The bottom pic on the front page of this site is Cord holding one of his cousin Christa’s boys, while riding in the back seat of a UTV.  I think it is Corbin, Jarrett and Christa’s youngest.  He was probably somewhere around age 2, and likely hadn’t seen Cord in many months.  Yet there he was, on a hot afternoon, asleep on Uncle Cord’s chest.

For the past 13 or so years Melanie and I have been part of a church group that often met/meets at our house.  Many of the families had younger kids.  They all loved Cord.  We have multiple pictures of a friend’s young son or daughter sitting next to Cord somewhere in our house.  He had a way of making children comfortable when they were around him.  Our niece Mattie’s son Calvin is 3, and until very recently was terrified of me.  I have no idea why he avoided me, but he had no problem walking right up to Cord and letting Cord pick him up.  Call it an essence, or the ability to emit a calm presence to which kids were drawn.  Whatever it was, it abounded in Cord.

The readers who knew my Uncle Charlie have seen this before.  Charlie had the same spirit as Cord.  ALL kids loved Charlie Brown (his real name, not the Peanuts Cartoon character).  I think kids can sense adults who are gentle and genuine.  Cord was both.  He could also calm a child who was upset and explain things in a way they understood.  It was one of the things I loved most about him.  He was not concerned about the things around him when he was playing with a child.  He was intent on their happiness.  It was an absolute joy to behold.

I was greatly looking forward to watching Cord be an uncle.  It mattered not whether it was Dylan or Blake’s kids, or Christa’s boys, or his good friend Spencer’s sons.  He was going to be that cool Uncle you could always count on if you needed something.  Who among us doesn’t remember that one adult family member who really understood us or who we loved to spend the night with at their house?  I am deeply saddened those kids will never have that opportunity with Uncle Cord.

In his fantastic best-man’s toast delivered at Blake and Brooke’s wedding this summer, Dylan acknowledged his task was supposed to be Cord’s.  In closing his remarks, he let both newlywed Aggies know that when they eventually have little ones, the kids would receive double Longhorn gifts from both Uncle D and Uncle Cord.  It was both an acknowledgement of the ongoing role Cord will play in his brother’s lives and confirmation that our family will always tell little ones about Uncle Cordell.  We can only hope those kids are able to understand what a spectacular fellow he was, and that maybe, just maybe they too might have his essence.  Perhaps one of them will grow up to be the uncle or aunt we knew he would have been.