Grace, Sarah and Lily,
POWER OF LOVE: Madonna Badger tells NBC’s “Today” show yesterday that she still speaks to her tragic daughters Grace, Sarah and Lily, killed in their Connecticut home (above) last Christmas Day.
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Madonna Badger wants nothing to do with Christmas this year.
When the first anniversary of the horrific Dec. 25, 2011, house fire in Stamford, Conn., that killed her three children and her parents arrives, Badger will be halfway around the world in Thailand.
It’s a place she calls a “Santa Claus-free zone.”
“I’m going to work in an orphanage there with young girls who’ve lost their families, little girls, and bring toys from my garage that belonged to my children,” she told Matt Lauer yesterday on NBC’s “Today” show.
With the first Christmas season since last year’s heart-wrenching tragedy under way, Badger says she’s finally finding some peace.
“I”m doing really well,” she told Lauer. “I’m shocked that I’m doing OK, but I’m doing really well.”
It’s been a long, difficult battle for Badger because of the scale of the loss she suffered in the blaze — the deaths of her 9-year-old daughter, Lily, 7-year-old twins, Grace and Sarah, and her parents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson.
Badger says she has gotten help in overcoming her grief from an unexpected source — her lost children.
She said believes her daughters have sent her mystic messages from beyond the grave.
“Lily came to me very early on and said, ‘Don’t worry, Mommy, I’m right there in your heart and I love you,’ ” Badger told Lauer.
“And once when I was having level-10, the worst sort of cries, it feels like blood is coming out of my eyes, Sarah came to me in the mirror and she said, ‘Mommy, there is nothing to be afraid of, everything is going to be OK.’ ”
Badger said the visions at first made her fear for her sanity.
But then she discovered a popular self-help book in which a neurosurgeon describes a near-death experience that convinced him heaven is real.
It also convinced her.
“Honestly I thought I was delusional. I thought I was a little nuts,” she said. “But then I read ‘Proof of Heaven’ by Dr. Eben Alexander, who’s fantastic. We sat down a couple of weeks ago and had a cup of coffee.”
Lauer also pointedly asked Badger about an interview that her ex-husband, Matthew, gave to New York magazine. In it, he admitted he was so distraught after the fire that he wanted to kill Madonna and her then-boyfriend, contractor Michael Borcina, who removed smoldering embers from the fireplace and put them in the mudroom on Christmas Day, sparking the blaze.
Madonna says she harbors no resentment toward Matthew.
“I thought that was perfectly normal,” she said. “His response, I would have felt the same way . . . I certainly felt the same way.
“So I don’t judge Matthew’s grief. I don’t judge the journey that he’s on. In fact, I’m incredibly proud of him for what he’s done with the ‘Lily Sarah Grace Fund.’ ”
Matthew told the magazine that he was getting over his own grief by also traveling to the Far East.
He said that, earlier this year, he and his current girlfriend visited with the Dalai Lama in India.
They also spread some of the girls’ ashes on a hill there, he said.
As a show that there were no hard feelings, Madonna yesterday said she would give money from her charity, “The Other 364,” to her ex-husband’s charity, which he said is struggling for money.
In describing her fight to overcome her grief, Madonna said she sought help from three mental institutions.
Finally, friends helped put her in touch with grief experts at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where she now lives.
She said her friends invited her to live with them, and made her promise that she wouldn’t commit suicide — after she admitted that she had been having such thoughts.
“I was gray, half my hair had fallen out. I was a disaster,” when she arrived in Arkansas, she said. “They made me promise I wouldn’t kill myself. And they brought me back to life.”
She said the grief experts didn’t treat her like she was schizophrenic, and finally found the best way to help her find relief and banish thoughts of suicide.
“I don’t have those thoughts anymore,” she said. “Mostly because I don’t know what would happen if I did that and I don’t want to risk not being with my children.”
Madonna said that, with her immediate family gone, she has been continuing to rely on her friends for emotional support.
Many gathered in Little Rock yesterday with a sign reading “We ♥ Madonna” to cheer her on as she appeared on the morning show.
“These people have showered me with so much love and given me hope, and I never felt judged. I always felt like they were there for me, through a million cards and texts and e-mails and dropping in to my house,” she said.
Badger said that one of the biggest steps she has taken in her fight to overcome her grief was realizing that it was OK for her to once again laugh and smile, two natural acts that filled her with guilt in the months after the tragedy.
“I don’t feel that way [anymore],” she said. “I mostly don’t feel that way because when I do feel happy, I do feel joyful. It’s when I can feel the presence of my children and of my mom and dad the most.
“You know I’ve seen my children in my dreams, when I pray I see my children.”
She said she’ll take time from her Christmas journey to Thailand to do a lot of praying, a spiritual journey that she believes will help keep her in touch with her children for a holiday reunion of the heart.
“I’m going to pray and meditate and be with my kids and love them and do the very best I can,” she said.
Additional reporting by Rebecca Rosenberg and Frank Rosario