A father's new mission: 'I'll be whatever you want me to be'

Mike Strange
Knoxville

Like many couples with small children, Tanner and Lexi Rice broached the delicate subject: What happens if one of us dies?

“We even joked about it,’’ Tanner Rice said last week. “ 'There’s no way I could live without you.' Both of us said that.’’

The last family portrait of the Rice family was taken in November. Tanner Rice with wife, Lexi, and their children, from left, Griffin, Avery, Caroline and Elena.

They agreed Tanner, the less cautious one, was likely to go first. 

“Lexi,’’ he told her, “I’m the guy who does stuff you think is stupid. Do you really think that I’m going to outlive you?' She said, ‘No, I don’t.’ ’’

They were wrong.

This Father’s Day finds Tanner Rice in the car driving from Knoxville to visit family in Texas with his four young children. He’s a single parent. Lexi died unexpectedly Jan. 30.

Lexi Rice and family out bowling in one of the last family photos in November 2016.

 

She was 34. She left behind three daughters — Avery, 10; Caroline, 8; Elena, 5 — and 3-year-old son Griffin.

She left behind a grieving husband trying to grasp a new reality while getting his four children from one day to the next.

“Father’s Day is going to be tough,’’ Rice said in his office at Maryville Christian School, where he is athletic director. “Father’s Day to me was just like Christmas or another birthday. She just made it special.’’

Rice grew up in Oklahoma. He came to the University of Tennessee as a walk-on football player in 2000. A receiver, he never got into a game but recalls getting his bones rattled by Kevin Burnett on the practice field.

By then, he had already met the young woman who would become his life’s love. She appeared one day at a youth camp in Texas, like a vision in a movie, almost in slow motion, walking toward him. But, he discovered, she was only 16. He would have to wait.

He did. They were married in 2003.

Tanner Rice and Lexi in 2003.

 

Rice owned a videography business. The itch for a more stimulating career led back to UT for a degree in business and sports management. The plan was to then return to Texas near Lexi’s family.

But after his stint at Episcopal School of Knoxville, Lexi gave her blessing for Rice to take the job at Maryville Christian in 2013. Life was good in East Tennessee. Griffin arrived to join the three sisters.

On a 2015 visit to Texas, however, everything changed. During a family outing at a pizza restaurant, Lexi collapsed, struggling for breath.

“She never fully recovered,’’ Rice said. “No doctor could ever tell her what was wrong. … We tried everything.’’

Lexi’s mysterious condition cast a shadow over the household. There was brief hope with antibiotics and then steroids, but it didn't last. By 2017, the deterioration accelerated.

Tanner Rice and his children, from left, Avery, Elena, Caroline and Griffin, at their home on Sunday, June 11, 2017

'I think I'm dying'

The last week of January, a checkup for a swollen breast revealed the likelihood of cancer. A biopsy was scheduled.

“She told a friend,’’ Rice said, “that this was not going to get her. This is not going to be her children’s story. And she died the next day.’’

It was a Monday. Rice was getting ready for work. Lexi told him not to leave her, that something wasn’t right. Things happened quickly. After a run to the pharmacy, he found her on the bedroom floor, gasping.

“She said, ‘I think I’m dying,' ’’ Rice said. “I said, ‘You’re not dying, give me a break.’ ’’

The ambulance came. Neighbors took the kids. At Parkwest Medical Center, her heart stopped. It was over.

“I was in disbelief,’’ Rice said, “I cried out ‘no’ a hundred times. Then it’s what do I do now? I have no idea what to do.’’

Tanner and Lexi Rice in 2003.

Jesse Cragwall, an elder at Providence Church and close friend, arrived at Parkwest to find Rice pacing the parking lot in a daze.

“It’s a day I’ll never forget and I don’t think anyone will,’’ Cragwall said. “We all knew she wasn’t doing well, but it came as a complete shock.’’

Cragwall, who served in the military in Afghanistan, never left Rice’s side for the next few days.

“My military discipline took over,'' Cragwall said. "I felt like I needed to be the information receiver and processor and decision-maker for him when he needed stuff to be done.’’

The first thing to be done was for Rice to explain to his children that their mother was gone.  

Avery and Caroline Rice hang out with the newest member of their family.

“Avery, the oldest,’’ Rice said, “wanted to talk in private. We went in the kitchen and she said, ‘Is Shannon (a nanny) going to come with live us? Are you going to get remarried?' "

Kids cut to the chase.

The day had to be gotten through. Rice took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese's.

“We had to do something fun,’’ he said.

That evening Rice had Cragwall drive him to the gym where Maryville Christian was playing in a boys middle school basketball tournament. A fleeting glimpse at normalcy. The family encamped at the Country Inn & Suites at Cedar Bluff for several nights. Going home was too painful.

“I couldn’t go back until I could calm down,’’ Rice said.

Swallowed up by love

The Rice Family in 2012.

 

More than four months later, Rice has calmed down. But he is still trying to discern a future without Lexi.

He’s still not sure what killed his wife. The examination revealed she did have breast cancer and that her organs were inflamed with necrotic tissue. It’s possible not one but two rare syndromes were at work.

What is clear is that the Rice family has been embraced by a support network that spans the school, Providence Church, Lexi’s job at Concord Performing Arts Academy, extended family, neighbors and anonymous donors.

Meals arrived. The house got cleaned, laundry done. Child care and home schooling were provided. Rice says the family has been “swallowed up” by love.

“It makes me wonder how people would ever get through something like this without that kind of support,’’ he said.

Friends set up a GoFundMe account. The goal was $20,000.

“We raised it one day,’’ Rice said. “They kept bumping it up because the money kept coming in.’’

The fund passed $60,000.

“That,’’ Rice said, “doesn’t even account for the money people sent me directly.

“Lexi was a dance teacher. The lady who took over her classes gave me her paycheck. She said this was the money Lexi would have earned had she taught all her classes, that she couldn’t possibly take it.’’

Tanner Rice and his children, from left, Avery, Elena, Caroline, and Griffin, at their home on Sunday, June 11, 2017.

Maryville Christian’s teams honored Lexi: special hair bows, black ribbons, pink socks, shirts, “Lexi” on the back of jerseys. Other schools in the league also showed support.

“It shows the power and beauty of athletics," Rice said. “They know how much I love this job and this school.’’

Shannon May, a friend from Texas, came for two months.

“She got the kids back on routine,’’ Rice said. “It was a blessing. There was stuff that had fallen by the wayside when Lexi was sick.’’

Rice believes the kids are doing as well as can be expected. Still, at the heart of it all is a loss that no support system, no matter how vast, can alleviate. Each child's experience is different.

“Caroline was absolutely crushed,’’ Rice said. “She was almost catatonic for a few days. She wouldn’t walk in our bedroom, would just stand outside the door and ask me questions.

“Avery is a go-getter. She wanted to keep going, almost to a point where it worried me.

“Elena, the next day (after Lexi died) woke up and burst out of her hotel room and said, ‘I’m going to be happy. That’s what Mommy would want.’ That was so awesome to hear.’’

Little Griffin struggles to understand.

“Poor guy,’’ Rice said. “He asked where Mommy was, and I said she went up to heaven now, she’s with Jesus.

“He said, ‘Where is Jesus’ house? Can we please go to his house and see her?’

“Every night before he goes to bed there’s a picture of him with Lexi and me. He kisses himself first, then he kisses Lexi, then he kisses me. It seems to make him feel better.’’

Tanner Rice and his children, from left, Avery, Elena, Caroline, and Griffin, at their home on Sunday, June 11, 2017.

'I know I'm not Mommy'

What will make Rice feel better, other than perhaps the passing of time?

“For Tanner, it ebbs and flows,’’ Cragwall said. “He wants to get to that point where he can reflect fondly on the life he and Lexi lived and appreciate it and not grieve so much. He wants to get to that point of moving on, but he’s struggling with what it looks like.’’

Their wedding anniversary was May 17. Rice woke at 4:30 a.m. in a fit of anxiety. He packed the kids in the car for an impromptu 18-hour drive to Texas to be surrounded by Lexi’s family.

Rice worries that the shock will make him hardened and bitter, not desirable traits for an athletic director or a single parent. A confidant told him it will be just the opposite, that his personal pain will make him more empathetic to that of others.

“That was enlightening,’’ he said.

Because more than ever, empathy and emotional connection are called for — especially relating to three daughters.

Lexi Rice and children in July 2016.

“It’s definitely different,’’ he said. “There were a lot of things I would just say, ‘Lexi, she needs you.’ I’ve tried to rely on my oldest daughter for a lot of that stuff.

“I just tell them I’m here. I know I’m not Mommy. But I can be whatever you want me to be for you. Whatever it is, good, bad or OK, I’ll do everything I can to provide what Mommy would want me to provide for you.’’

That’s the new reality this Father’s Day. Being a father is being everything.

Reach Mike Strange at mike.strange@knoxnews.com or on Twitter at Strangemike44.