A father has shared heartbreaking details about his six-year-old daughter who died in a freak badminton accident.
As previously reported, Lucy Morgan passed away on Wednesday, four days after the accident occurred during what was meant to be a peaceful getaway in Limerick, Maine.
“We were eating a quick lunch by the lake, and the kids decided to try badminton in the front yard. Bethany and I were relaxing in the back when we heard screaming,” recounted Jesse Morgan, Lucy’s father and a pastor at Green Pond Bible Chapel in Rockaway, New Jersey, in his blog post titled “Calamity Strikes.”
“Due to a freak accident with a racquet that broke on a downward swing, a sharp piece had entered Lucy’s skull while she was sitting on the sideline and caused catastrophic injury,” he added.
Maine State Police confirmed that the injury was an unintentional result of Lucy’s 10-year-old brother’s swing. The aluminum shaft of the racket detached from its wooden handle and struck Lucy in the head.
In a heartfelt blog post, Jesse Morgan revealed the overwhelming grief that kept his family from entering their home upon returning from the hospital.
“When we got home we arrived to flowers lining our steps and a fridge stocked with food. But entering was the hardest thing,” he wrote.
“We just sat on the front steps for a while crying until I finally mustered up the courage to open the door. We again collapsed in a pile on the kitchen floor crying harder as a family than we ever have.”
The deeply religious Morgan family found some comfort in their faith. Jesse shared that Lucy had asked her mother how to be “saved” just weeks before her death.
Despite initial doubts about Lucy’s understanding, the family found solace in her final journal entries. “It was then when we opened her backpack and found her prayer journal that Bethany had given her a month ago to the day of her passing,” he explained.
The journal contained affirmations of Lucy’s faith, drawings, and a final illustration believed to depict Mary and Martha weeping over the body of Lazarus, who was resurrected by Jesus in the Bible.
“This last picture takes the cake. The significance of it being the very last thing she drew in the journal cannot be understated,” Morgan said. “It’s hard to put into words how deeply I feel about it.”
Jesse also shared the raw and brutal reality of the situation, recounting his wife’s profound grief on the day Lucy passed.
“On June 4, the morning of the day Lucy was predicted to pass, it was very hard to distinguish the groans and cries I heard from Bethany at 3am that morning from the ones I heard on the morning of September 4, 2017, when Bethany birthed Lucy,” he wrote. “The pain of a mother in this situation is so incredibly unique, heavy, and frankly awe-inspiring to witness.”
A GoFundMe has been set up to support the Morgan family during this difficult time.