Editor's Note: A tragic fire on Christmas morning at the Connecticut home of legendary ad executive Madonna Badger claimed the lives of her three children and parents. In this essay, Houston writer Cameron Dezen Hammon recalls what she learned while working for Badger and offers a prayer that she will find peace.

When I entered the building on lower Broadway, nestled just south of NYU between Dojo (Tahini Veggie Burger, please) and my favorite record store, I knew immediately I wanted to work there. Her office took up an entire floor in a converted warehouse with an endless stretch of recovered hardwoods and floor-to-ceiling windows. I would have no time for lunch, let alone browse Guided by Voices CDs if I got the job, but I didn’t care. I needed that job, badly. New York City — the celebrity parties, the drugs — the lifestyle I’d so quickly slipped into post-graduation was eating me for lunch.

In my interview I didn’t meet the legendary ad executive Madonna Badger, but rather a fresh faced, Midwestern girl whose all American looks disguised a profound work ethic and urbane taste. I knew my faded Gap blouse was not going to cut it among the effortlessly chic Martin Margiela sweaters and Armani Exchange trousers.

My interviewer asked me a few questions and I answered passionately, eager to show off my wordy capabilities. They needed copywriters after all, and I would work for almost nothing. Though at the time I had no professional experience (my creative writing thesis on Billie Holiday was my resume) I was hired on the spot and sent to work immediately in the galley of "client relations." Madonna herself arrived early and left late each day. I was eager to catch a glimpse of her.

First day on the job

My first day went well, I thought; I had spent most of it trying to familiarize myself with the project. It was the late ‘90s and the dotcom boom was in full swing. We were pitching a new, obscenely well-funded beauty company, hoping the magic we’d create would woo them — and their cash — to the agency. I loved the project and I loved writing, so I stayed past six o’clock on my first day, quite proud of my effort. As I gathered my belongings and was heading for the door, Madonna Badger appeared.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked with a smile. The gap between her two front teeth made her look slightly like the other Madonna, and her presence was just as rock star.

“Home?” I asked tentatively. I looked around at the determined young women, all my age, all Ivy League graduates, still glued to their desktops.

“OK,” she said, after a beat, “I guess it’s your first day.”

I never left before 10 p.m. after that. And lucky for me, by that time I was too exhausted to meet my druggie friends. Before I knew it, I had been sober a month and was working my ass off. The pitch was going well. The art department — that mysterious place beyond the elevator — was churning out the most beautiful images of the most beautiful model I had ever seen. We spent hours (and hours) tossing around phrases, taglines, punch lines, until we were punch drunk and someone decided it was time to order dinner. My days and nights came and went, full and fast.

My desk mate, a pretty, blonde girl (whose grandmother happened to be the famous, troubled stage actress Mercedes McCambridge) invited me to a Christmas cookie exchange in the West Village. Just the type of wholesome event I would never have chosen to attend in the past, but in this new getting-my-life-together-phase was just the sort of thing I was looking for. I loved my job, I was making new friends, I was doing something with my life now, not doing drugs in the bathroom at Nell’s. Over Christmas cookies I met a gaggle of British expats, some artists and DJ’s who were hosting a church in their Sunset Park walk up. I’d never been to church, but I decided that, too, would fit the new me, and perhaps support my new sobriety. I invited myself along to their next gathering.

Then another funny thing happened: I gave a demo of songs I’d been working on to one of the graphic designers at Badger Worldwide Advertising. His girlfriend worked for a record company and was looking for a singer for a project one of their artists was working on. I had given my demo away dozens of times before, thinking nothing of it and to no result. But this time, a few weeks later, the phone rang and it was Warner Brothers Records.

She made magic

In the midst of all this, Madonna seemed to glide day and night from her mahogany book-shelved office down the long, open hallway to the art department and back again. She drank endless cups of tea, always steeped just so and served by a mysterious sixty-something South African woman who, it appeared, was employed simply to make sure Madonna was comfortable and that she occasionally ate something. We were at the height of the project and Christmas was coming.

One night we were hunched over the few taglines we’d decided to show Madonna and were giving them one last look over. I glanced over my shoulder. Her shiny, dark hair was tucked neatly behind one ear and her dark rimmed glasses were halfway down the bridge of her nose.

“It’s that one,” she said, pointing to one of the sentences near the top of the page, “but with this,” she leaned over and scratched out a few lines, replacing them with her own. Then she calmly strode back to her office.

We stepped back, reading the phrase quietly, then intermittently speaking it aloud. She was right, of course. She had done it; she’d made magic.

A few days before the eagerly anticipated staff Christmas party at the loft she shared with her husband, I browsed her bookshelf — poetry, prose, literature, art. “I don’t usually let people borrow my books,” she said, her voice husky and boundaries clear, “but you can take it. You have to promise to return it though.”

That was 12 years ago. I still have it; a book of disjointed prose and memoir by Anais Nin, one of my favorites at the time, entitled Fire. The strange irony of that fact is not lost on me today, as I sit in Houston, a mother myself and Christian minister, thinking about Madonna Badger and all she lost this Christmas, to that most brutal of elements.

But Madonna herself, not unlike her namesake made famous on that very first Christmas morning, is an element, a force of nature. She is made of something so rare, so fine and resilient, that I believe she may be the only sort of person who could survive such a tragedy.

I am left thinking that she will do more than just survive it, though survival in the face of such unimaginable loss is heroic in and of itself.

Say a prayer

Who I’ve become is due in no small part to my time with Madonna. And part of who I’ve become, what I try to do, is offer spiritual comfort in times of tragedy. This time, though, I am finding myself with far more questions than answers. And so I do what I do when I don’t have answers: I pray.

Here is my prayer: That we, her community — and all that are moved by her story — allow Madonna to grieve and to simply survive, for now. Let us not encourage her to become a crusader. Let us not rush in with requests for appearances, for statements, for meaning, for magic. Let us simply weep with her. And howl with her. And laugh with her. And remember. And grieve with her.

And let us be present to that grief. Because there is no meaning in such a tragedy, for anyone. There is only the comfort that we will one day be reunited with our beloveds; that they are now safely at peace though the fire rages around us —the survivors —still.

My last day working for Madonna Badger was not unlike my first. The project ended, I knew that day would come, and so I packed up my few. I said goodbye to my coworkers, many of whom had become friends, some of whom had impacted me in ways I am only now grasping. I chose a table outside at Dojo, ordered my veggie burger, and watched the young, smartly-suited women emerge from the building across the street, focused, determined, with somewhere important to be and no time for lunch.

Cameron Dezen Hammon is a mother, worship pastor and songwriter in Houston.