The return of the Backstreet Boys sparks memories of a lost daughter
Source: www.thedepot.com
By CATHY GANT HILL
Staff Writer
06/15/01 GREENSBORO -- Naomi Hollingsworth-Clark has been planning for months to see the Backstreet Boys when they return Sunday to the Greensboro Coliseum.
Some nights she can't sleep. Some days she can't eat. She plays their CD when she's doing housework. She knows each of the five group members by name.
It's not that Hollingsworth-Clark, 41, hasn't grown up yet. It's that her daughter never got the chance to.
Crystal Paige Hollingsworth-Clark, 12, one of the world's biggest Backstreet Boys fans, died unexpectedly a year ago Sunday of endocarditis, a heart inflammation. Before her death, Crystal and her mother had the time of their lives at the Backstreet Boys' first Coliseum concert in February 2000. The show was on a school night, and mom and daughter made the most of it: taking in dinner first, dancing to the band beat, buying souvenirs and talking, talking, talking about how cute band member Nick was.
Four months later Crystal was gone. A bacterial infection crept from her heart to her brain over the course of three weeks, ending with her death on June 17.
When Hollingsworth-Clark learned that the Backstreet Boys would return to the Coliseum this Sunday, she believed her daughter was sending her a message.
"If it had been the 16th or the 14th or the 11th, it wouldn't have fazed me," she says of the concert date. "But a year to the date? The first anniversary, the exact date -- it just sent chills up and down my spine."
Still devastated by the loss of her only child, Hollingsworth-Clark goes through the motions. She makes herself work, vacation and go to Bible study, but Crystal is always on her mind.
Hollingsworth-Clark and her husband, David Clark, never saw it coming. Their only child hadn't missed a day of school since kindergarten. On the Friday before Memorial Day 2000, when she said she didn't feel well, her mother told her to take it easy.
By the wee hours of Sunday morning, when her fever had become accompanied by diarrhea and vomiting, her mother called the doctor's office. The on-call staff said it sounded like a virus, Hollingsworth-Clark says, to give Crystal a teaspoon of liquid at a time and to increase the amount if she could keep it down.
The office was closed Memorial Day. On Tuesday, Hollingsworth-Clark took her daughter to her pediatrician. He said it was a virus, Hollingsworth-Clark says, and sent them home. On Wednesday, when she called the doctor's office again, Hollingsworth-Clark says, she was told to let the virus run its course.
When Crystal couldn't add 7 and 4 on Thursday, her parents took her to an urgent-care center. A physician's assistant took one look at her and called an ambulance.
The staff at Moses Cone Hospital diagnosed a bacterial staph infection and had Crystal flown to UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill for more extensive treatment. She died there June 17. As that date approaches this weekend, Clark is hoping the buffer of the wildly popular boy band will lessen the sting of her daughter's loss.
"It's like Crystal said to me, 'That's going to be a very bad, horrible day, Mom, so go have some fun,'" Hollingsworth-Clark says.
She will try. She has seven mid-level tickets on the very first row, where, from Section 123, seat 6 or 7, she'll listen to her daughter's all-time favorite group.
She has even asked Coliseum officials if they can get the Backstreet Boys to dedicate a song in Crystal's memory.
"I know they probably get tons of requests to do stuff," Clark says. "But she was their No. 1 fan, one of their No. 1 fans. She was loyal. When 'N Sync came out and people started talking about them, Crystal wouldn't have anything to do with them. She called them the 'N' band."
There's no word yet on whether the Backstreet Boys will be able to grant that request.
"We've received the request and have passed it on to the appropriate people," says the Coliseum's public relations manager, Andrew Brown. "If the band decides to do this, we will be happy to assist in any way possible."
Crystal's favorite Backstreet Boys song was "I Want It That Way" and her favorite Backstreet Boy was Nick. The night she saw them in February 2000, she was so smitten that after she got home she put Nick's poster on the ceiling above her bed.
Clark asked her to take it down, telling her, "Punkin, you'll never get to sleep."
Crystal complied, taping Nick to the side of her dresser. Right by her bed. Where she could look at him every night. The poster is still there in a room left untouched. And Crystal's conversation lingers, too:
"Mom, do you think we could start a Backstreet Girls band, and then all the girls would get to meet the Backstreet Boys. Wouldn't that be great, Mom?"
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