After we lost our Madeline, we didn’t know what to do with our lives. Everything we did, we did for her. Our lives, once focused on our wonderful daughter, were adrift.
Too devastated to plan our child’s funeral, our friends did it for us. So unprepared for the financial burden of paying for it, thousands of people from all over the world made contributions big and small to assist us. There was more donated than we needed.
So what to do with that extra money? We knew right away.
Today we are proud to announce Friends of Maddie, a non-profit organization we’ve started in honor of Madeline. Friends of Maddie supports families of critically ill babies by easing the transition into NICU life and providing an ally until the end of their child’s hospital stay.
Our time in the NICU was so frightening, lonely, and overwhelming. As Maddie’s parents, we can think of no better way to honor her memory than to help other families in her name.
We ask that you please help support other families the way you so kindly supported us. Please visit Friends of Maddie to learn how you can help. We’re kicking things off with an amazing giveaway!
Thank you all, from the bottom of our hearts, for making this possible.
Mike & Heather Spohr
“I would give anything if I could have just one more minute…”
The above is something the bereaved often say. Personally, I have always found it to be a silly statement…after all, what good is a minute? Three of them pass in a commercial break, sixty in an hour, nearly fifteen hundred in a day. A minute is so fleeting, in fact, that forty-two million of them expire before a person reaches their eightieth birthday. Clearly, a minute is nothing special.
“I would give anything if I could have just one more minute…”
What a silly thing to say.
At least that’s what I used to think. Today I realize that, as quickly as a minute may pass, it can be the most valuable thing in the world.
Lately I have begun to fantasize about what it would be like to have one more minute with Madeline. In my fantasy I imagine Heather and myself sitting on our couches as we do so much lately, absent-mindenly staring at our computer screens, when all of a sudden a few notes echo from Maddie’s long silent little red piano. I look up and see Maddie pressing the keys as she flashes that brilliant smile of hers at me. Heather and I look at each other in disbelief, then throw our computers aside, leap to our feet, and wrap Maddie up in our arms. As we cover her little face in kisses Maddie giggles and says “Wow” in her sweet little voice. Tears soon stream down our faces as Heather and I kiss our baby all over…on her tiny hands, her cute belly, her pudgy little legs…and run our hands through her curly hair. Finally, as the minute winds down to its final seconds, we tell her that we love her and kiss her one last time before she is gone once again.
As silly as it may sound, I would give anything…absolutely anything…to have that minute.
