RAMSEY: Schwartz family celebrates Mandi's brief life
DENVER • Jaden Schwartz scored and started a gleeful, if strange, celebration on the ice. He shook his fists and howled, and the hostile crowd at the University of Denver’s Magness Arena hissed and booed.
DU fans didn’t enjoy seeing the enemy having so much fun.
Rick Schwartz, Jaden’s dad, was smiling a dozen yards away from the ice.
“Well, I enjoyed it,” he said.
It had been a trying day for Rick and his wife, Carol, and Jaden and Rylan. Mandi Schwartz, Rick’s daughter and Jaden’s and Rylan’s sister, would have turned 24 on Friday.
She died April 3, a victim of acute myeloid leukemia.
Rick had promised his sons — both stars on Colorado College’s hockey team — he would watch them play against DU on Friday.
He wanted the family to be together to ease the lingering confusion after Mandi’s death. For the past two weeks, he’s struggled to accept Feb. 3 would arrive and he would unable to call his daughter to wish her happy birthday and tell her how much he loved her.
Yet the thought of being with his boys raised his spirits. The Schwartzes would gather together to celebrate Mandi’s life, to remember all she was and all she might have become. The family also hoped to rejoice after a victory over DU.
And they did. Jaden’s first-period goal propelled CC to a 2-0 victory.
“This was a special night for us,” Rylan said.
“Special because of Mandi.”
A massive snowstorm on the Front Range nearly caused all those plans to crash. On Thursday night, Rick received an automated call on his cell phone. His flight from Regina, Saskatchewan, to Denver had been canceled, and Schwartz’s family reunion was in peril.
Rick knew he didn’t have time to wait on the phone.
He drove to the Regina airport and found a sympathetic airline worker who spent more than an hour searching for flights before finding one from Saskatoon to Denver.
Rick and Carol drove 3½ hours in the wee hours of the morning to the Saskatoon airport. They arrived in Denver exhausted and relieved.
“This is Mandi’s day,” Rick said, “and we wanted to be here for her birthday. We wanted to be together. We think somebody was looking over us. We think somebody made sure this worked for us.”
Mandi played college hockey at Yale, and her battle against leukemia inspired the entire campus to rally around her.
She went into remission in 2009, giving her family several months of hope. The leukemia returned, but her spirit never diminished.
Jaden said Friday was a rugged day. He thought of his sister and smiled. And he thought of his sister and battled tears.
"A hard day," he said. "There’s an empty feeling in your stomach, and it feels like you’re really missing something. But she would want us to be happy as best we can, and so I try to do that for her.
"The game was for her, and obviously the goal was too."
As Rick watched his sons, he held a Molson beer in his right hand and a smile came to his face when he talked about hockey. His sons are playing well, playing together, enjoying life in their new home far from the flatlands of Canada.
Rick’s smile faded when he talked about Mandi.
“A lot of firsts are coming up,” he said.
“A lot of firsts. This day is hard. April 3rd is going to be really hard.”
He looked back to the ice, where Jaden and Rylan skated alongside each other in black and gold uniforms.
“But you have to go on living,” Rick said.
“You have to.”
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