Sep 24 - Reading

We had gotten down to Reading about 11:30 p.m. on Friday. It was a horrible drive, rain most of the way and neither of us saying anything, lost in our thoughts, lost in our grief. Sandy couldn't eat; I had a Tim Horton's sub and felt sick afterwards. Abby was her own perky self, however. She's happy as long as she's with us.

It was too late to see Jeffrey and Sara; we'd talked to them along the way. We left the hotel and got to their place around 9am. Susan and Liz (Sara's mother and sister) and Liz's son Chase were already there. Chase is 11, I believe, knows us well because he's been to the cottage. Later in the day he helped me assemble some shelves in the garage, continuing the project that I'd started when we were here in June. I had to do something.

Sara was asleep or resting when we got there. Jeffrey was on the phone with the coroner. Long story short, they were doing an autopsy; results were due later in the morning; results were inconclusive. They did take tissue samples etc. and will continue their testing but are releasing the body to the funeral home. So far it's looking like SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome -- basically if they cannot find any other cause of death, it's SIDS. That is, in fact, the definition of SIDS, as we now know.

He was so happy in the morning, cooing and laughing. Perhaps somehow it would have been easier had he been born with some physical problem that has now taken him, but no. Sara is struggling with "what if's" -- what if she'd have checked him more often; what if they'd continued to use the monitor -- but it had produce false alarms over and over as Alex moved in his sleep; what if ..... and always why ??.

David arrived around 5:30 p.m. having driven down from Barrie. Although Kim and Megan did not come, they were all hit hard, having Skyped family-to-family just a few days earlier. David was on the phone a few times with them during the evening, also because the store was really busy that day. Kim went over to help clear the day's dry cleaning input.

Not much later, Melissa and Frank arrived -- close friends of Sara and Jeffrey. They are also helping to plan arrangements and are putting Sara and Jeffrey in touch with a support group. That's good, because after the hustle and bustle is over, after the family has left, they will need help to deal with this tragedy. The loss of a child is a terrible thing.

I have always had in my mind that I don't want to out-live my children. I had never given a thought to grand-children.

So far the plan is to have a viewing on Monday afternoon and a service on Wednesday. In-between, he will be cremated. I don't know if Sandy will be able to go to the viewing. She won't be able to get close. She never can.

He was a gift; pregnancy hard to come-by; high risk from early on both for him and for Sara; now gone. I'm about to go to Mass. I'd like to think that I'll find answers, but probably not. Understanding something like this is beyond us. Millions of innocents die young. One of my grandmother's favorite sayings was "only the good die young". Alex must have been very good. Of course Grandma Thompson was in-jest referring to herself, not young and still thriving at the time.

I'm out of words.