It had started out as a cold winter.  It was just before Christmas that my family had heard that our cousins Jazzy, Max, and Zoey along with their parents, Melanie and Tom, were coming to visit from Texas, it had been a very long time since my family had seen them.   Everyone was really looking forward to being happy and having a great time together.

It was the Saturday before Christmas that the Schwolerts had arrived from Texas.  It was a bitterly cold day with the temperature high of 0 degrees.  But that wasn’t going to stop us from seeing our cousins.  It is about a twenty-minute drive to my grandparents’ farm where my family was going to be spending the Christmas season.  As soon as we stepped out of the car the first person I saw was this very tall, gentle giant standing at six feet, four inches.  His nickname at school was Panda because of his size and kindness, but we call him Max.  My family then talked with the Schwolerts seeing what was new, how school was going, and staying nice and warm on such a cold winter day.  But the weather wasn’t going to stop us from having fun outside.  Even though it was very cold, we still were able to convince our parents and our papa (grandpa) to take the tractor and tie a toboggan to it and go sledding.  All of us had smiles on our faces.  The moms were taking pictures, the dads were talking, and the kids were either sledding or having a friendly snowball fight.

Once after the sledding was done, everyone went inside for coffee and some hot chocolate along with the scones that Nana had made.  Once the coffee was drank, and most of the scones being gone, the family started to play games like Banana Grams and Pictionary. Pictionary was such a great game for the family because all eighteen of us could play together and have a great time.  This is the time when coughs were heard more and more.  There was actually a game that was started.  Somebody would be in the kitchen, and every time there was a cough, they would try and guess who it was.

Christmas Eve had finally come.  This was another day filled with lots of fun and joy.  We kids actually made up a game where we would go up on top of the hill by the house, and we would spin around for 30 seconds and then race to a point in the snow-covered lawn.  Our families were so happy to be together again.  We had so much fun stuffing ourselves silly with Christmas food and candy, and then having the whole day to relax and play more games.  This is when the coughing started to get louder and more frequent.

  Christmas day had came.  And once my family had opened up presents we had gave each other we went out to Nana and Papa’s farm to have Christmas with the Petersons and the Schwolerts.  After everyone was stuffed with turkey, we started to play more games of Pictionary.  At this time the coughing got even more frequent and louder.  My dad had been sitting by the table with his head down for a long time, so I went over to sit by him and see if he was alright.  He told me “Dylan, this is the sickest I have been in a very long time”, and almost everyone felt like him or worse.  Especially Max, there was this look on his face that could never be forgotten by anyone, everyone knew he was really sick, so he laid down in the bedroom for a few hours.  Max then started to feel better, so we all played a couple more games of Pictionary and then had some dessert.  This was the last night for the Schwolerts, in the morning they were going to pack up and go back to Texas.

It was the day after Christmas, it’s usually a happy day for everyone, but it was the complete opposite for everyone in my family.  My uncle Tom and my aunt Melanie made the decision to take Max to Amery’s hospital.  My mom and my two sisters Devan and Drew had went with Jazzy and Zoey to Ida Mae’s Café.  Then we got a call that things had gotten a lot worse, within 30 minutes of arriving at Amery’s hospital the doctors made the decision to air lift Max to Regions Hospital. My dad had then picked up Drew to watch the helicopter fly away.  I was then home alone when I heard the helicopter, so and I ran outside in the Zero degree weather with just my pajamas and a blanket and I watched the helicopter fly over my house and air lift my cousin to Regions Hospital.
The happy days of Christmas went by very fast, but the four days in that hospital went very slow.  When waiting in the waiting area it was hard to keep yourself together.  When the nurses went by they had a smile on their face, but when the doctors went by there faces were white.  The doctor had taken my aunt and uncle in a room and had talked to them.  The doctors said that things were not going good at all, it was like a bunch of little problems came together and created the perfect storm.  The scariest thing about going to see Max was seeing a young healthy kid having so much going for him ending up like that.  My sister Devan had told me that when her Tanner, Jazzy, and Zoey went in the room to see Max, his heart rate was really low and when they started to talk to him, his heart rate started to get higher and higher.  When I came in the room to talk to Max, I started to say my goodbyes, and I started to talk to him about the little stories we had together.  I had moved my hand on his arm, Max’s arm was the coldest thing I had ever touched.  On December 29, 2012 at 7:15 p.m. the Schwolert and Teig family went into the hospital room to say a few prayers for Max’s journey home, and for him to watch over us as we live out our lives.

Max’s story has traveled all over the world, from China all the way to France.  My family started to make t-shirts that say “Love to the Max” on it.  There have been a lot of celebrities who have worn the t-shirts including Doctor Phil and the coach of the Minnesota Vikings.  There is now a Twins baseball game that hundreds of people go to every year wearing there purple “Love to the Max” t-shirts.

It’s crazy to think that one event that happened in one week changed so many lives, including mine.  There are amazing things that have happened after my cousin’s death.  For example, my cousin Tanner had something happen to him just after Max’s death, he was on his phone and then all of the sudden Tanner’s phone paused and went to the text messages that Tanner and Max had exchanged together. 

There is still one story that everyone in my family doesn’t get.  After Max’s death, my aunt Melanie and my uncle Tom started to clean max’s room, it had started to get late so they finished up a few things and they shut off the lights and closed the door.  In the morning, Melanie woke up and went over to Max’s room.  The door was open and the lights were on.  She asked everyone in the house Tom, Jazzy, and Zoey if they had went into the room during the night, and none of them ever did.

Even I have had really cool things happen to me. For a couple of nights in a row I had very vivid dreams of all of my cousins at Nana and Papa’s farm, playing in the snow or out having adventures in the woods.  I can still remember Max’s face and the way he talked, it was so amazing having those dreams.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of Max in some way, it seems all the time that he is trying to say hello with panda bears or music by his favorite artists.  When I think of Max and knowing he is up in the clouds I always think of this quote by Abraham Lincoln. -“And in the end it’s not the years in the life that matters, it’s the life in the years.” Evan though Max did not have many years on this Earth, he sure did have a way in living it to the fullest.