JM#12: A baby, a name, and a goodbye
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Entry #12 • November 11th, 2025 The Last Win I Shared12.12.2019 Whew. Here we go. All in. The holiday season of 2019 was a wild ride because I was very pregnant. Some of you may remember that particular Cyber Monday—I did live videos all day on Instagram and Facebook, joking that I might just have the baby live on camera. I was due any day at that point. But that sweet babe decided to hang on and let me power through those last crazy days of retail.
On Tuesday evening, December 10th, just one week after Cyber Monday, my seventh child joined us after an uneventful home birth. My kids were all downstairs watching a movie and eating pizza while I was upstairs in my bathroom bringing their new baby brother into the world. They had no idea. 🙊 I’m like a cat in a closet when it comes to birth—I like to be alone. (If you’d ever want to read any of my birth stories here in Just Me, click here to vote yes...I’ll keep it in mind.) Shortly after he was born, the kids came up to meet him—completely shocked that Mom had delivered a baby during their pizza party. After that, it was basically bedtime. I snuggled in with my new baby as we embarked on our first night together, outside the womb. The next morning, the nerdy business geek that I am was thrilled for my coaching call at 11 a.m. I’d been part of this business group for almost three years. These people had become some of my closest friends in the business world. We were a diverse crew...owners across the U.S. (plus one in Canada and one in Germany), different industries, different business sizes. But we shared a few core values: lead with integrity, keep learning, and impact our communities for the better. Our coach, Chris Oakley, guided us through it all with his core philosophy of “doing less, better.” Mondays were for Ask the Coach sessions—our chance to bring real challenges. Wednesdays were Winning Wednesdays, where we celebrated wins big and small. Fridays focused on a new business topic. I tried to make every call. This group was my tribe of mentors, and Chris was the steady voice at the top reminding us to focus on what truly mattered. So on Wednesday, December 11th, I couldn’t wait to share my newest win—a baby boy. At 11 a.m., just fifteen hours after giving birth, I logged into Zoom with my son across my lap, hidden from the camera. When Chris called on me, I unmuted, reached down, and “Simba’d” my newborn up to the screen. “Well,” I laughed, “I had my baby. It’s another boy.” 😂 Oh man…everyone’s faces. 😂😂😂 That was such an epic moment. Chris had no idea what to say — he kind of fumbled around, totally thrown off. He didn’t have kids of his own, so his ability to relate was hilariously mismatched. He couldn’t quite grasp that I was on a call less than a day after giving birth (which, fair 😂). I motioned to the side of the screen and said, “Yeah, he was born right there in my bathroom.” Lol. Sometimes I’m amazed people still associate with me after I pull things like this. 🙊 He asked what we’d named him, and I told him we were still deciding. After ten boy names between five sons, my list was getting thin. At the end of the hour, Chris reminded us we wouldn’t meet Friday; he was headed out on a long-anticipated hunting trip in Pennsylvania. He was already there, actually, hosting the call from his friend’s cabin. “No call Friday,” he laughed. “Unless you guys want to host one without me! Ha! See you Monday.” Then came his signature wave. “Later!” And with that, he closed out the Zoom call. That second night with my sweet baby, a name started to burrow in my heart: Felix. The next morning (Thursday, December 12th), I told my husband. He liked it too. We still needed a middle name, though. He suggested Christian...a name I never would’ve thought of. He said he just liked the sound of it, and that it could also tie back to my brother Christopher. Everyone else calls him Chris, but my parents and I have always called him Christopher. I told him I’d think about it. I wasn’t sure. The day moved slowly, full of newborn snuggles and the sound of six other kids bustling around the house. That evening, my older boys had basketball practice. Alberto would take them; I’d stay home with the littles and bask in the bliss a newborn baby brings. The Call That Changed EverythingAbout fifteen minutes before Alberto got home from work, my phone rang. It was one of my closest friends from the business group. I grinned, thinking she was calling to congratulate me. But her voice…her voice said otherwise. “Megan,” she started, uneasy and trembling, “Chris was killed in a hunting accident today.” Wait—what? My mind spun. Her words didn’t compute. “He died, Megan. It was an accident. The gun misfired.” I don’t remember what she said after that. I just remember sinking into the couch, baby in my arms, everything muffled. The boys stared, confused, watching me process something unspeakable. “Chris Oakley was killed in a hunting accident,” I finally managed. At some point, Alberto came home. Maybe he was even there when I answered the call—I honestly can’t remember. He wrapped me in a hug and told me how sorry he was. Then he offered to take all of the kids to basketball so I could rest—just me, the new baby, and my thoughts. I agreed, but asked him to leave three-year-old Abel with me. When the house emptied, I sat there holding Felix and started to cry. Abel came over, looked up at me, and asked why I was sad. His little voice—that small slice of innocence—felt like grace. I asked him to climb up on the couch and just sit with me. We locked our arms around each other, the newborn tucked in the crook of one of mine. The next few hours are a blur. I’m sure texts were flying through our business group, all of us trying to make sense of the news. Chris had died earlier that day. He was climbing down from a tree stand. His friend was already on the ground. As Chris passed down his rifle, it slipped, hit the ground, and misfired—sending a bullet upward, striking him in the neck. He died instantly. Ohhhhhh God…even now, it still wrecks me to recount. About forty-five minutes after Melissa called with the shocking news, I sent her a text: I’m not even processing what you just said. I opened my Bible app, and this was the verse of the day. I have no words. Nothing. Can’t hardly breathe.
Isaiah 40:11 (KJV)
"He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young."
How would I continue in the messy world of business? Finding a coach had been such a gift—helping me grow as a business owner while raising six (now seven) children. That verse gave me comfort. God saw me exactly where I was. He promised to lead those that are with young gently. How is God so kind—and so perfect—in moments of pain and despair? I sat numb on the couch for those two hours. What I remember most is thinking I wanted to somehow loop Chris’s name into my new baby’s name. But I wasn’t sure about bringing it up to my husband. It seemed maybe out of place—my thirty-seven-year-old business coach as my child’s namesake? Especially since my husband had never even met Chris. It felt unfair to pull him into that kind of decision, to ask him to carry my loss in our son’s name. When my husband got home with the kids, he walked straight to me and said, “What if we named him Felix Oakley? In honor of Chris.” For a moment I just stared at him, stunned. He had never even met Chris. I never would have brought up naming Felix after him—it felt too heavy, too tangled in my own grief. But when those words came from my husband, I knew. That was to be his name: Felix Oakley. I struggled with it for the first few months of his life. I loved his name…but I hated it. Because he only had it because Chris was gone. I knew, though, that with time I’d grow to love it and be grateful. I could already picture Felix growing up to be some kind of bold leader. With a namesake like that, how could he not? The next day was Friday—the cancelled call day because “Chris would be hunting.” Well, we did host a call without him, just like he’d joked two days earlier. We all sat on that Zoom call bawling our eyes out. Forty-plus of the strongest, boldest, most compassionate leaders I know—sitting in silence, crying in the little boxes Zoom relegated us to. I remember being so mad at Chris, like he’d jinxed the whole thing. We shouldn’t have been on that call, and we wouldn’t have been, if he hadn’t died less than twenty-four hours before. When Felix was nine days old, he and I took a couple of flights to get to Atlanta, Georgia, for Chris’s memorial service. I’d debated going. I told my friend (and employee at the time), Sara, that I was worried about flying with such a new baby. My biggest fear was, What if we catch the plague or something and he gets really sick? I’ll regret going. Sara reminded me that both choices carried risk, but she believed I’d find more peace in going than in staying home out of fear (she was right). So I set the fear aside and went. Nearly everyone from the business group showed up—more than 50 of us. I told them beforehand not to ask to hold the baby; I was already anxious about the travel. The last thing I wanted was to play pass-the-baby with people flying in from everywhere. They were, of course, understanding. Those couple of days in Georgia were both wretched and precious. I’m so grateful I didn’t miss them. What RemainsA couple of weeks after I got back, I had a dream—December 28, 2019. It felt unbelievably real. I still question if it was a dream. Is it possible to peek into eternity? For two realms to brush up against each other with only the thin veil of death between? Here’s what I captured after I woke up: I was sitting across from Chris at a table and he was sitting there all happy-go-lucky like he would. I said ‘Chris, do you realize you're dead? You're gone!’ He smiled and was like ‘Yeah, so I've been told. Megan, hold onto your testimony, hold onto it tight! It's so important.’ There he was…coaching me, typical. I basically ignored him and responded ‘Chris, it's been so hard with you gone. It's heart-wrenching.’ Then I just started sobbing while he kept smiling. He had so much peace on his face. I can still picture it perfectly, as though I actually went somewhere. I can still feel it. He was himself—unbothered, steady, with that big grin—just trying to tell me something that mattered. Give me one last coaching session. Within three months of Chris’s accident, Covid rolled across the world—the 2020 “plague.” I couldn’t believe it. I’d lightly joked about my baby catching "the plague" (before the world knew of Covid) on our trip, not knowing the world was about to turn upside down. As business owners, we entered one of the hardest times in recent history—and we had to do it without our coach. Shortly after he died, we decided we needed to keep the group together. As each of us navigated grief in our own way, a few of us stepped up to form the founding board of what we called Community on Demand—a play on Chris’s business, Coach on Demand. (Side note: yep, that’s me in the group photo on the homepage with one of my babies strapped to the front of me…on brand, Colorado Baby, on brand.) Community on Demand became the community of business owners Chris had brought together, the one we leaned on through grief and the uncertainty of Covid. I was honored to be one of the founding board members and served for five years. My term ended last December. This group is beyond precious to me. We’ve weathered difficult storms these past six years, but we’ve stayed for each other—to encourage, to spur on, to keep moving “up and to the right,” as Chris would say. This is the same group I went to Seattle with recently—some of my dearest friends when it comes to the ups and downs of business and life. I’ll share more about that in another entry. For now, I’ll close with some pictures. Just Ship ItAs I wrap up this entry, I can’t help but think of Chris again. He always told us to “just ship it.” Don’t wait until something’s perfect, just get it out there. That lesson has lingered with me ever since. In many ways, Just Me has been that for me—a little nod to Chris’s wisdom. A space where I can just ship it. Write what’s real. Share what’s here. No polish, no pretense. Now that it’s out there, I’d love your help steering where it goes next. This isn’t a fancy survey (I wish I had those buttons but I'm writing this email on the "free level" of this platform for now), but I figured out a low-tech way to make it work. Each answer below is a clickable link that takes you to the same “thank you” page on my website (no matter what your vote is). Every click helps me see how many people chose each option. Two quick favors before you dive in:
Thank you for helping me just ship it a little better each time. Your Thoughts on Just Me#1 Audio Version I’m toying with adding an audio version of each entry (read by me). It would be a small, optional subscription—like $7/month (about the price of a matcha ❤️). #2 Reading Rhythm How do you usually read Just Me? #3 Frequency How does the weekly rhythm feel to you? #4 Anticipation How do Just Me emails usually find you?
#5 Entry Length How does the length of Just Me feel to you?
#6 Open-Ended Why do you open and read Just Me? (I’d genuinely love to know—feel free to reply to this email and tell me.) Your presence here reminds me why I keep showing up. Thank you for being part of Just Me and for embracing these just-shipped stories as they come. -Just Me[gan]
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