By Jori Epstein, Senior reporter
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Matthew Golden used to keep the photo on his bathroom mirror, next to the dry-erase list of goals he’s scribbled atop mirror after mirror since he was 6 years old.
But now the Green Bay Packers’ second-year receiver wakes up to the photo each morning on his nightstand. He glances at it.
Golden was young as he walked the aisle between pews, in his robin’s-egg-blue suit. Perhaps 3 years old? At most, 5. Next to him, his cousin Makaylin’s dress balloons from its blue velvet top into a white skirt with blue flowers. Golden was Granny’s ring bearer; Makaylin, who was born the same day as Golden, her flower girl.
(Courtesy of Alicia Blackshear)
So much has changed since Matthew and Makaylin walked the aisle then, and so much changed long before the Packers selected Golden in the first round 23 years after they’d last spent a Round 1 pick on the position. Getting drafted, and achieving one of Golden’s long list of mirror-scribbled goals, was a highlight. He told his teammates that when the Packers receivers went around the room in May to each share their three H’s: hero, hardship and highlight.
Golden’s hero and hardship? Those have shaped him much more strongly than his highlight.
First, the photo: Makaylin was killed not long afterward, in November 2009, when at 6 years old she was crossing her family’s Houston-area street. A 62-year-old man who’d already received three DWI convictions was driving drunk, his blood alcohol level more than four times the legal limit, per a local ABC News archive. As he sped, he lost control of the car and flipped. Makaylin was killed instantly, on the street where much of Golden’s family lived and where Golden and Makaylin had so often played.
Golden’s “first best friend” — with whom he played with dolls and in the mud, and with whom he bickered over chicken nuggets and shared Chuck E. Cheese birthday parties — was gone in an instant. On the family street where she died, the heart-shaped brick memorial bearing her initials seemed to magnify the unfillable void as Golden aged while Makaylin didn’t. The quiet but inquisitive Golden went from asking his grandmother questions like how many stars were in the sky and how far away the moon was to darker questions.
“The questions then turned to, ‘Why did she have to die?'” Golden’s grandmother, Penny Williams, told Yahoo Sports by phone this week. “It was, ‘Because God chose her,’ and that was the way we had to make him understand because he didn’t.”
Seventeen years after Makaylin’s death, Golden still doesn’t understand and still doesn’t forget. He dedicated his “My Cause My Cleats” campaign last November to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, his cleats imploring “No More Victims.” He grieves for Makaylin far more often than once a year.
“Obviously I was young and the more you grow up and you just go now with life, you kind of forget about those things,” Golden told Yahoo Sports during a recent sit-down interview. “But for me, that never left my mind, just the way she was gone. I think about it every day. Especially during hard times when things do get rough
“I just think back to just us being little kids and just going back to everything outside of football or outside life. And it was a special moment for me.”
Golden thinks back to his early childhood when maybe things weren’t easy but they also, when he turned 6, weren’t nearly as hard as they’d become.
Because back when Makaylin pulled a stage-fearing Matthew down the aisle with her to throw flowers for Grandma Penny’s wedding, Golden’s bossy cousin’s confidence offered a sense of security that in the coming years would dissolve.
The nightstand photo stirs emotions of Makaylin’s loss — but also of the oasis of life back when Golden still only knew what life was like with consistent housing.
So when the Packers receivers went around the room in May, sharing their heroes and hardships and highlights, Golden told them of his mother, Alicia Blackshear, sacrificing to support her son physically and emotionally. And for his hardship, Golden explained: Growing up, Golden, his mother, grandmother and cousin had together experienced homelessness.
“We had a very dark moment for about seven years when we just couldn’t come afloat,” Blackshear told Yahoo Sports during a recent FaceTime interview. “But we went through it holding our heads high. That’s what I wanted for Matt: I want you to be able to battle. Go toe to toe with anything that happens.
“Don’t let it break you.”
So as Golden returns for his second year in Green Bay after his opportunities and production that disappointed during his rookie year, he does not buckle at the pressure.
Golden didn’t buckle at the pressure of the Packers bucking a decades-long trend to select him 23rd overall and he doesn’t buckle at the pressure of rising expectations after the Packers moved on this spring from receivers Romeo Doubs and Dontayvion Wicks, setting him up for more targets.
Instead, Golden thinks back to the loss of his cousin and the bouts of homelessness and the strength his mother and grandmother modeled, and the pressure morphs into motivation, reinforced always by the work ethic his mother instilled.
The pressure of football?
“I just kind of think back,” Golden says, and “I’m like, if I can go through that, this is nothing.”
Matthew Golden is entering his second season with the Packers. (Photo by Patrick McDermott/Getty Images
Sleeping in hotels and a Walmart parking lot ‘pushed me to get to where I am today’
When they lived at a hotel, Williams shared a bed with her two grandchildren. Golden cradled his football each night; her granddaughter snuggled a Barbie.