Her baby's death inspired grace in the face of racism

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Double lines appeared as soon as she looked down at the stick.

Chelsea Mayes, then 19, sobbed on the toilet in her parents’ home here, about 35 miles southeast of Nashville.

How could this be happening? Mayes hadn’t been with her long-distance boyfriend — they had been fighting — for at least five months.

She had been losing weight, not gaining weight in those five months. In fact, in all that time, Mayes experienced no signs she was pregnant, except for vomiting for a few days in a row, which made her take the pregnancy test.

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How was she going to tell her boyfriend? Forget that: How was she going to tell her preacher father and church-loving mother?

“My parents are going to kill me,” she said. “I had every emotion you could think of.”

Mom and Dad showed their daughter nothing but grace and love, supporting her through her pregnancy in every way they could.

The baby boy, Kyson, died 3½ after he was born.

Eight months later, Mayes shot into the national spotlight after showing grace to a waitress who had called her and her friends the n-word on social media.

“I am so hungover,” the server wrote on Snapchat while serving Mayes and her friends. “And I have a section full of n-----s right now.”

Mayes responded with a Facebook post that said, in part, “This ‘n-----’ loves you and there isn’t anything you can do about it.”

Mayes said her attitude of forgiveness is newfound, inspired by the short life of her son.

“To see how he made such an impact in such a small amount of time? Incredible,” Mayes said. “It made me think: How am I impacting people? What more can I do? You get a new faith in God.

“Now, it’s almost like my faith won’t allow me to hate or be angry,” she said.

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Mayes' son was perfect, she said. He slept through most nights from the get-go, smiled and cooed often, rarely cried.

“He was my best friend,” she said. “I know babies can’t talk, but we talked to each other. I took him everywhere.”

After his late-night feeding, Kyson usually slept until 7 a.m. CT when his crying would wake up his deep-sleeping mom.

A couple weeks after turning 3 months old, Kyson started to get congested, and Mayes took the baby to the doctor.

The diagnosis: Respiratory syncytial virus, also known as RSV, which can be fatal in babies younger than 4 months old. Mayes was concerned, but relatively calm about Kyson’s illness.

“I looked at it like it was a cold,” she said. “I figured, hey, he’s almost 4 months old. I’ll do what I’ve got to do and he’ll get better.”

At 2 a.m. Dec. 31, Mayes fed her baby, and they both went to sleep. Mayes got up at 9 a.m., surprised, then concerned that Kyson didn’t wake her up earlier.

“Kyson’s not breathing!” she shouted after going to the crib. “Call 9-1-1!”

What happened next is a bit of a blur, but Mayes remembers screaming at the top of her lungs.

A woman police officer comforted her and held her like a mother would. Another officer gently put her in a cruiser to follow the ambulance carrying her baby to the hospital.

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Mayes walked in and out of the room where doctors and nurses were trying to revive the baby.

“And I watched them stop working on him, unplugging everything. ‘Please don’t stop! Please don’t stop!’ ” she thought. As nurses wrapped up Kyson, Mayes bolted from the room and screamed and screamed in the hospital hallways.

She eventually went back into the room where her baby had died. She cried.

“A while later, I could tell my dad was coming in because he was sobbing so loud,” Mayes said, tears in her eyes.

“It was heartbreaking. Everybody was in tears,” she said.

Just before the funeral started, Mayes and her brother walked up to the casket and quietly sang Hakuna Matata from The Lion King, their favorite song to sing to Kyson.

Yet as dozens of people filed in, Mayes said she started to feel peace and joy.

“I have never seen so many people at a funeral. It’s amazing how such a new little baby could touch so many lives so quickly,” she said.

Smiling, dry-eyed, Mayes stood up and sang two gospel songs, Who Holds My Hand and Thank You Lord for All You’ve Done for Me, in front of all those people.

“You had to be there to believe it. The sun was beaming in that church harder than ever,” she said.

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That’s when Mayes decided she would live her life as she believed that Kyson would want, acting with love and grace in all she does. And that included when the Cheddar’s waitress, someone whom she liked, later used a racial slur on social media to refer to her and her friends. (The server no longer works at the restaurant.)

“I couldn’t bring myself to negatively attack her,” Mayes said after a friend forwarded the post. “Now I think, 'How would Kyson want me to respond to things as his mom? Would it make Kyson smile?' ”

Follow Brad Schmitt on Twitter: @bradschmitt