How Icing Smiles Helped Make Jaden’s Last Day on Earth a Celebration

Felicia Taylor knew it was going to be her son Jaden’s final birthday. But when she planned the party — complete with a 3-foot Diego cake made by Icing Smiles Sugar Angel Mike Elder — she didn’t know that it would also be Jaden’s last full day on Earth.

Jaden entered Felicia’s life through foster care. As an infant, he had suffered a traumatic brain injury. When other kids were going to Mommy and Me classes, Felicia and Jaden were going to doctor appointments. There were surgeries, medical procedures, and countless hours of physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy.

Yet Jaden was still just a kid. He loved the large all-inclusive playground with ramped play structures, deck platforms for wheelchairs, a sensory tunnel, and a communication board with common words and symbols near their home in Overland Park, Kansas. He was delighted by music, especially when his mom sang him songs — “You Are My Sunshine” was his favorite — and was disappointed anytime he was told no.

Despite his wheelchair, he was an explorer. “He hated being confined,” Felicia says. His constant companion was a toy puppy he named Scout. His favorite TV show was Go, Diego, Go, an animated spin-off of Dora the Explorer that follows Dora’s cousin Diego, an 8-year-old boy whose adventures frequently involve rescuing animals and protecting their environment. And he relished the sense of freedom he felt in water. “He loved bath time, loved to swim,” Felicia says. “He was a water baby for sure.”

Jaden’s Journey

But Felicia knew something wasn’t right. In addition to seizures, Jaden was experiencing intestinal issues. “I noticed he was having some episodes, but I didn’t know what was happening,” Felicia says. “I took him to the hospital, and we discovered that it was pain. He was just in a lot of pain. Since he was nonverbal, he couldn’t explain, ‘This hurts’ or ‘This bothers me.’”

For two years, Felicia and Jaden went back and forth between Children’s Mercy Hospital Kansas and Boston Children’s Hospital, the No. 1 hospital for children’s gastrointestinal issues. Jaden was diagnosed with gastroparesis, hyperthyroidism, and hyperalgesia, among other things, but nothing the doctors did improved his symptoms. His intestines were failing. After a fourth-month stay in Boston, Jaden was released “with the understanding that he most likely wouldn’t improve,” Felicia says.

When they returned home, 8-year-old Jaden was put on palliative care.

Finding Icing Smiles

Icing Smiles Sugar Angle Mike Elder with Mom Felicia Taylor

Icing Smiles Sugar Angle Mike Elder with Jaden’s mom, Felicia Taylor

That July, Jaden received a trip to Give Kids the World Village in Florida through Make-A-Wish. Prior to the trip, Felicia joined a couple Facebook groups to read about other families’ experiences at the nonprofit theme park for critically ill children. That’s when she learned about Icing Smiles.

Jaden was now on hospice, and Felicia knew it would be his last birthday. She wanted it to be special, and she knew what the theme of the cake should be: Diego. The rest, she left up to the Sugar Angel, Mike Elder.

Mike became a Sugar Angel in 2010 and has completed over 30 calls to action, including our 25,000 cake. The owner of Black Sheep Custom Cakes in Wellington, Missouri, Mike understands the power of a cake. “I had a lot of trauma as a child,” he says “A lot of dark stuff happened to me. Kids don’t deserve to be in these situations. It’s nice to be able to do something fun and positive and support a kid that doesn’t have a whole lot of that going on.”

When Mike’s not baking cakes for kiddos with medical conditions or their siblings, he’s baking 8-foot-tall cakes for Gordon Ramsay or competing in bake-offs on TV (he’s been featured on more than 15 shows).

When the CTA came in from Felicia, he knew he wanted to go all out. “I wanted to make sure it was worthy of this boy,” Mike says. He created a 3-foot-tall sculpted vanilla-and-raspberry Diego cake. He was supposed to deliver the cake to Jaden’s favorite park, but the week before the birthday party, Jaden’s health started rapidly declining. He wasn’t tolerating any of his feedings, he was sleeping more and more, and when he was awake, he was in great pain.

On Friday, Sept. 7, Jaden moved to a hospice house.

The Last Birthday

The day of the party, Saturday, Sept. 8, was a beautiful day. The nurses at the hospice house decorated a tranquil outdoor area with Diego decorations. Jaden’s family; teachers, paraprofessionals, and schoolmates; and his health care providers were there. And when Mike showed up with the cake, everyone was in awe.

“It was overwhelming emotionally to see such a beautiful cake,” Felicia says. “This could have been a contest and Mike would have won hands down. His creative ability was just — he went above and beyond, I mean above and beyond, for my son. It was so cool.”

Although Jaden was really struggling, Felicia says there were a few beautiful moments when he would sit up, open his eyes, look around, and hold onto some of his favorite toys. “I could not have asked for a better day for him,” she says.

That night, Felicia crawled into bed with him at the hospice house. In the middle of the night, Jaden woke up, looked up at Felicia, and said, “Hey.”

“His favorite thing to say was, ‘Hey,’” Felicia says. “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Guardians of the Galaxy’s Groot. He says, ‘I am Groot.’ That was Jaden with his “Heys.” He had a “Hey” for hello. A “Hey” for goodbye. A “Hey” I’m happy. A “Hey” I’m angry. And we loved it. That was our language, full of “Heys.”

Felicia says it was a loving and tender moment just between Mom and son. “That was the point that I told him that he could let go whenever he was ready — that I would be OK and he could let go. And he did.”

Jaden passed on Sunday, Sept. 8, 2019, two days before his ninth birthday.

“It was so hard to do that because it’s out of the ordinary to lose your children,” Felicia says. “You don’t want your children to leave you, especially so permanently. So telling him that was really hard, but it felt right. Being able to tell him that he could let go and he could be free was like the ultimate moment, the ultimate test of being a mother. You know, just allowing your child to transition on, to leave you.”

A Celebration of Life

Felicia never expected her child’s last day on Earth to be a celebration — but she wouldn’t have had it any other way.

“Every expectation of his future that he wouldn’t have, every memory of his past that he enjoyed — it was all wrapped up in that one day,” she says. “It meant that, regardless of circumstance, we could celebrate him. It was, in a sense, even therapeutic, just being able to acknowledge that he was a child. This wasn’t an adult who had lived a full life. This was a child, and having this amazing cake was just an honor of his childhood, of what he loved. So to have this cake that was like the final send off for him, to be able to have that day — it felt right. It felt good.”

A year later on Jaden’s birthday, Felicia and her other son, Jason, actually got to enjoy the Diego cake. Felicia couldn’t bear to cut into it the previous year. After the party, a teacher and paraprofessional helped cut the cake up into smaller pieces so it could be frozen. On Sept. 10, 2020, they thawed the cake and ate it.

“If I were to have a regret — I mean, I don’t regret it, but I kind of wonder what the cake tasted like fresh because it was so good a year old,” Felicia says. “It was amazing.”

Now, every year on Jaden’s birthday, the family goes on “Jaden Adventures.” This year, they traveled to Omaha, Nebraska, to visit the Henry Doorly Zoo. “Jaden would have loved to have gone,” Felicia says.

Jaden’s brother, Jason, also received Super Siblings cakes through Icing Smiles on his birthday. ”I really wanted to do something special for him because it was only a couple months after his brother passed away,” Felicia says. “So we went to Main Event and celebrated his birthday. The cake was absolutely awesome.”

“I’m so beyond thankful to Icing Smiles for such an amazing program,” she says.