Walk Softly – A Memorial
We receive beautiful and heartbreaking emails each and every week. You share your stories and your loved ones’ stories with us. Thank you.
Maria wrote to us about her friend, Rebecca. They met in an online support group for people trying to conceive after loss. Just before Christmas 2014, Rebecca gave birth to a beautiful baby boy named Kieran. She described, “He was big and healthy, and we took him home from the hospital as proud parents.” Within days of coming home, he became sick and was treated for jaundice, but had bacterial meningitis caused by E. coli. Kieran fell into a coma and never woke up.
Rebecca wrote, “All of the light and color in our life went with him. We have found some color again in the last year by planting flowers at his grave, tending them, and trying to make it nice for his memory. It has been therapeutic for us.”
When Maria wrote to us earlier this year, she shared, “I was saddened to learn recently that Rebecca and her husband haven’t been able to afford a memorial stone for Kieran’s grave, and that dear Rebecca feels guilty about this.” They had found a peaceful place for their son at the Kettleby Cemetery. They would decorate the site and visit every Sunday – but did not have the money for the gravestone they desired.
Amidst her own pain, Maria said Rebecca always reached out to support others. In her email, Maria told us Rebecca was expecting again and that she desperately wanted to help her get the process of finishing her son’s grave underway before the new baby’s arrival.
With your donations, we were able to send the funds to purchase Kieran’s gravestone. In a note of thanks, Rebecca wrote, “I can’t tell you how amazing, heartwarming, and just awesome that makes me feel. I went up on Saturday to the Signature Memorials place and picked out a stone for my son, and they are going to add a diamond etching picture for free.”
She chose a black stone, polished, with the family names and a quote:
Walk softly, our entire world lies here.
Her note continued, “My husband and I cried very hard that night because it is such a big part of our grief and very symbolic, but the next day I felt as if a weight was gone that I didn’t know was there. Thank you for honoring our son and helping me get what I desperately wanted for my baby.”
Rebecca has since been busy with life and her newborn baby girl. She and her husband continue to plant flowers around the stone as a weekly project to honor and “do something” for her first born. When the gravestone installation was complete, we received beautiful and colorful photos of Kieran’s memorial site.
If you’d like to donate to the healing, uplifting work of Together Rising, please go to https://togetherrising.org/give/.