Calling the Christmas Day fire that killed her three daughters and parents “incomprehensible,” fashion ad exec Madonna Badger told hundreds of people packed in a Fifth Avenue church this morning that she’ll never forget her family.
“Why did this happen to my parents and my children and why now? Nothing will bring my babies back,” Badger told mourners during an emotional eulogy at St. Thomas Church.
Cars carrying the girls’ remains today in New York. (Warzer Jaff)
Badger’s parents and daughters died in the predawn blaze that swept through her Stamford, Conn. mansion.
Badger, dressed all in black, wept as she bravely addressed the crowd of some 1,000 mourners to talk about her “little tribe” of daughters.
A few feet away were three small caskets, laid side by side, each with a white and pink wreath.
“My girls are in my heart. They’re right here. And that’s where they live now,” she said.
Through pauses to break down in tears, but keeping amazingly composed during the 15 minute eulogy, Badger talked about how love is the only thing that has kept her going.
“In all the incomprehensible loss and chaos, all I can hang onto is that love is everything,” she said.
Badger said dealing with the deaths “is going to be hard” and insisted that she’ll never forget her lovely daughters.
“I want to remember my girls out loud. To fight for them to never be forgotten,” she said.
Badger also shared what her daughters meant to her, but added that they were just “the smallest of drops in an ocean of memories.”
Of Lily, she said, “Lilly was my angel and my life and she was my first born.”
Badger then spoke of her daughter Sarah, saying she once comforted her while battling a cold.
“She sprayed my face with magic mist and put a toy dog in my hand and said, ‘Don’t worry … this will make you sleep,'” she recalled. “She used to hold my head at night and tell me how much she loved me. This was my Sarah, my little whipper snapper, loved and lovable and full of love.”
When it came to Sarah’s twin sister Grace, Badger said, “Grace was fearless, the first to pick up the creepiest, grossest bug she could find.
“She was a fisherman and an adventurer and her imagination was boundless. There was nothing Grace Badger could not make with a Band-Aid. When she loved you, she loved you completely.
“She asked me once if she was going to die before me and I said, ‘No Grace, that’s not going to happen.’ But that happened.”
Among the mourners were some 70 firefighters involved in dousing the inferno and the Stamford Mayor Michael Pavia. Eighteen firefighters served as pallbearers.
Mourners, which included designer Calvin Klein, were handed a program that featured a photo of a laughing 9-year-old Lily and her 7-year-old sisters, Sarah and Grace.
A private service will be held later at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx for the girls and their grandparents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson.
The victims died of smoke inhalation, officials said.
Grandfather Lomer Johnson also suffered blunt head and neck trauma, which resulted from a fall or being hit by an object.
Investigators said the blaze was sparked when still-smoldering fireplace ashes — which Badger’s contractor boyfriend Mike Borcina had placed outside in a bag so the kids wouldn’t worry about Santa getting burned — ignited the home.
Investigators said the home was wired for smoke detectors, but they hadn’t been installed. Officials deemed the house unsafe following the fire and ordered it torn down the day after.