Ben was born and died on Tuesday, early in the morning, March 10th of 2009. At first we thought Ben’s funeral was going to be on Saturday, but because of the severity of Pam’s condition we spent a week in the hospital and had to wait until that Monday. Pastor Brian and Larry Gay from Living Word walked me through, step by step on how to plan for my son’s funeral. [Read more…] about 012 Planning a Funeral
013 Ben’s Mix CD
For those of you who know me well, you know that I love to make mixes for people. Music changes everything. God uses music to speak to me and I use music to talk with people. Sometimes a song just says it so much better. I knew the first thing that I needed to make for Ben was a mix. But what was going to be on it?
All I knew was that I wanted to make a mix and hand it out to everyone who came to see Ben at his funeral. I wanted to give them something that could help them remember my son. [Read more…] about 013 Ben’s Mix CD
014 Pam’s Letter to Ben
After I finished created Ben’s CD that night with Pam, I didn’t know that Pam began to quietly panic about what she was going to do or give to Ben. Here I made this CD for him to hand out at the funeral and she couldn’t think of one thing to do.
A toy from her childhood? Should she make something? Buy something? She couldn’t think of anything. I had no idea how she struggled that night as my two friends Carl and Tim stayed up with me putting together the last of the cds. It was Sunday night, the eve of the funeral. [Read more…] about 014 Pam’s Letter to Ben
015 John’s Letter to Ben
Sunday night, the day before Ben’s funeral Pam and I were so twisted inside. I remember telling Pam that I had this feeling of excitement mixed with nausea thinking of getting to see Ben one more time.
The funeral director also goes to our church. His name is Larry. He was amazing to us. He called me just a couple days before the funeral and said it looked really good for us to have an open casket. Because he’s a baby, he was born a week ago now, and his skin was so fragile and thin he wasn’t sure if we were going to be able to have an open casket or not. He called us and gave us the good news we were going to be able to see him one more time. [Read more…] about 015 John’s Letter to Ben
016 The Funeral
Pam and I woke up Monday morning in a fog. We picked our clothes out in that fog. We got dressed in that fog. And we waited for Pam’s best friend to pick us up in that fog. I’ve read from multiple people in multiple books that none of us knows how to face death because it’s not what we were programed for. We were created and designed NOT to face this: death. It’s not how God designed it to be. We just don’t have to tools built inside of us to know how to face this. [Read more…] about 016 The Funeral