Free Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child by Ellen Mitchell Page B

forward to … but they were there for me and for their other grandsons.”
    Lorenza: “Both my husband and I had parents at the time. They felt the loss tremendously. Marc was very close with his grandparents. Thank God my father had Alzheimer’s disease. I was praying I would get Alzheimer’s at the time. I would cry and my father would ask me why I was crying. He remembered Marc only as ‘that nice boy that lived over there.’”
    Maddy: “My mother was sitting next to Neill on the bus. They both fell asleep. She woke up and he didn’t. She went into shock. She feels more guilt than the rest of us.”
    Ariella: “My father died of a broken heart. He kept saying it should have been him and not Michael. When my father was in intensive care, he looked up at the ceiling and he said he saw Michael; he said that Michael looked good.”
    The death of our children has had its affect on our grandchildren, even those who were not yet born at the time.
    Barbara G.: “We wanted a grandson to be named after Howie, but our eldest son Philip just could not do it. Within a short time, however, the little one … with whom I am totally besotted … developed a stubborn streak. We see a touch of his Uncle Howie there.”
    Phyllis: “When my daughter became a mother, she had a hard time letting sher children go on field trips or ride in a car with anyone else. She would accompany them. She felt uncomfortable when they left for school on the bus.”
    Carol: “Lisa died on a respirator and when her sister had her first child she named her after Lisa. Hannah Lisa was born six weeks early and so she came in on a respirator. I went into the nursery and when I touched her hand and said her name she responded to me right away … like she knew me, like Lisa was inside her. And she looks so much like Lisa.”
    Phyllis: “Two of my granddaughters are named after Andrea. That was very hard. When my first granddaughter was born four years after Andrea died, I couldn’t go to the hospital, I was like lead. I somehow thought I was going to go and see Andrea. Months later, when my second granddaughter was born, I went and it was easier.”
    Our children’s aunts and uncles and the parents of their own close friends will always be affected by what happened. They will, for instance, forever panic when a daughter or son is late in arriving home. Death causes a ripple effect far beyond our own households.
    Rita’s brother Frank Rizzello chanced upon the accident scene in which Michael was killed. He saw the high-intensity lights and made a turnaround, drawn for reasons beyond his understanding to the death scene. He did not realize that he was witnessing the final moments in the life of his beloved nephew, but he stood and prayed as Michael’s body was extricated from the wreckage. Later he would write a poem about it, part of which is excerpted here:

    I prayed for you and stayed by you
Not knowing who you were.
Destiny and eternal love led me to you in your final hour
And I could not leave you.
You were not alone, Michael,
You were not alone.
    Frank Rizzello

    It remains a comfort all these years later to Rita and her husband that, while fate did not allow them to be present at Michael’s death, his uncle was there to ease Michael’s passage from this earth.
    Rita: “I wish I was there, Michael, the moment you died, to hold you. I would have stroked you and rocked you and held you so tight.”
    Many of our own brothers and sisters were and continue to be a great source of comfort.
    Phyllis: “My brother Joel is extremely supportive. He tells us to this day that we are handling this with grace and dignity. I like that.”
    Barbara E.: “My sisters came and spent time with Brian in the hospital. Now they come and spend his birthday, holidays, special days with us.”
    Lorenza: “My brother Ralph has been a constant source of support. He never forgets an anniversary or Marc’s birthday. Each Mother’s Day he continues Marc’s