Following our experience, we felt led to start a fundraiser in Helen’s honor to help place more Cuddle Cots in hospitals across Tennessee. In the past year, we’ve raised over $26,000 for six Cuddle Cots thanks to kind and gracious friends, family and strangers. Additionally, we were able to donate funds to Saint Thomas Midtown Hospital where Helen was born to help with the construction of a new Family Bereavement Room. There families who have lost a child will have a place inside the labor and delivery unit to spend time with their baby. They will be able to give their child a bath, dress them and create hand and foot imprints keepsakes in a private space.
As we move forward, Joel and I have continued to honor our daughter by creating the Helen James Foundation. Its mission is simple: To support grieving families who are experiencing a pregnancy or infant loss. We will focus on Cuddle Cots for the immediate future for Regional One Health (formerly The Med) in Memphis, Tenn. and for Northwestern Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago, Ill., where our nephew, Jamie Sebastian, was born. My sister Lindsay spent a lot of time there when she was pregnant with Sebastian, and Chicago is like a second home to our family, so we know it will be so special for us to have Helen’s presence there.
To help spread the word of the foundation’s launch, we emailed friends and family and began an Instagram page. Within five days, we were able to raise more than $6,000 for our Cuddle Cot campaigns for these two hospitals. We continue to be amazed by the generosity of others and their constant, ongoing support.
There is not a moment that goes by that I don’t think of Helen. It warms my heart when others talk to me about her or send me a message about how much they miss her. I often forget that it is not just Joel and me who experienced this tremendous loss. Our friends and family did as well, and they will forever remember and mourn her too.
Joel and I are expecting another baby in December. We feel so blessed to get the chance to be parents to another child. We hope and pray every day for a healthy baby, and we have no doubt Helen is with us every step of the way, watching out for her sibling and her parents. To those parents who have lost children, our hearts are broken with yours. It is truly a pain like no other. Joel and I do believe that there can be hope and joy amidst your grief. We are living proof of that.
Looking back over the past year, I can say that, somehow, we have managed to survive. I cannot say yet that we have come out the other side. Our hearts are still so heavy, and the loss of our child is sometimes almost too much to bear. However, the deeper understanding of what it means to love is more apparent than ever.
I can only thank one person for that: our daughter, Helen James.
