VAN BUREN, Ark. — On May 21, 12-year-old Macii Reichstein passed away after having a seizure while she was swimming. A little over a month after Macii's passing, her family wanted to do something special to honor her memory.
Macii's twin sister Maddisen decided there was no better way to honor her than doing what she loved most.
"She was supposed to go into seventh grade this year, and she wanted to do track," Macii's grandmother Shawna Knighten said. "Her twin sister Maddisen wanted to honor her sister by running a 5K, and putting on the 5K, and running for her sister."
For Maddisen, she couldn't imagine living a life without her sister.
"She was my best friend, and another half of me that I have lost," Maddisen said.
Their grandmother was so proud of Maddisen watching her run as she said goodbye to her best friend.
"Pride, humbled. It was very emotional for a lot of us," Knighten said.
During Macii's life, she suffered from many seizures including absence seizures where it looked like she was zoning out but her brain was seizing. With the proceeds from the 5K, her family is planning to donate 25% to the Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock to go toward their seizure research.
"We want to help them in their research so that they can start diagnosing more and faster to help more families so that they don't have to go through this and lose their child," Knighten said.
The one thing Maddisen wants everyone to know about her sister is how loving she was.
"She loved everybody," she said. "She didn't care how she was treated or how people looked at her, she just cared about how she treated them and how what she said affected them."
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