What's Our Thing?

Bereaved parents that I knew of before the accident all had their thing. They had something that allowed them to express the love they have for their child since they can no longer express it to them directly. After meeting more bereaved parents, I found out that more had their thing than what I assumed. It’s an attempt to numb the pain through this expression of love. Some focused on an act of service, or maybe raising money for a cause that is dear to them.

Some parents focus that energy into a new relationship. One spoke for MADD since they lost their son in a drunk-driving related accident. Some start scholarships, memorial runs, name a room after them in a local building, or name a street after them. Bereaved parents can be very creative in finding ways to express that love.

More than one couple I knew started a foundation after their son passed. The Levi Miles Foundation focuses on helping children with disabilities and rare diseases, like the son of founders David and Shayna Miles. They were exposed to a whole new world of how to care for a child with a rare disease, the accommodations he would need, battling insurance when they wouldn’t pay for the necessities. After his passing, they didn’t want this knowledge to go to waste, and they needed to express their love for their child that they cared for unlike most parents will ever have to. 

Another couple started a foundation centered around helping communities and families through grief and trauma. As they attempted to navigate through their own grief, they wanted to share what they had learned, and offer support to those suffering like them. They offer counseling, support groups, and more. The Dalton House and Levi Miles Foundation allows their families to wear their loved one’s name and use their tragedy to help others. 

I notice that these families often start these ventures within the first year of their loved one’s passing. As I passed through month four of my son’s death, I understood why. I filled out form after form about him and the accident. It was soul-sucking to write my son’s name and then within a blank or two on a form, write his cause of death. One February day, I had one of my talks with my son. These come when missing him just hits a peak, and I’ve got to let some tears and words go out to him. This particular talk caught me off guard because as I was driving home from a work event, I was listening to “Push” by Ken on the Barbie soundtrack, and really believed I was in a good and fun mood, which just proves grief can hit you out of nowhere like a large wave. I started talking, and not long after, tears started to stream. I told him “I just want to see your name being written after your death, and it mean something good. Not sad, not just talking about the past, and not on another form.”

I took that moment to commit to starting this scholarship in my son’s and his mother's name. We kicked around the concept, had great ideas for fundraisers, but I hesitated at first. I didn’t really want that to be our thing. I'm trying to write a book of this experience as a cathartic thing for me, and I didn’t want to commit my daughter and I to something that would take a lot of our time. I wanted us to start this grief journey slowly and not jump into a lot of activities. A scholarship would be fun to raise money for, but it’s not like my son had any aspirational college dreams. He was your average 11-year-old. He loved Fortnite, sports, and movies. I wasn’t sure of the criteria either. At the end of the talk I had with Nolan though, I didn’t care about any of those small details. I just wanted to pour this love into something. Even if we didn’t want it to be our thing. 

Then, the more I thought about who would be positively impacted by this scholarship, the more it made sense. Nolan's family wasn't the only one to lose him. His friends and classmates were forced to face their own mortality as one of their own left school one day to never return. They wear memorial wristbands, shirts, and other homemade items to honor him. While that warms my dad heart to know that he's not forgotten, it also hurts to know that they have to remember. I want this scholarship to serve as a reminder that we hurt together, but that we will also persevere together. Sowing into their future, and the futures of the students after them, can be something that honors Nolan and Courtney and be a positive impact on the future they're forced to miss. 

Next, I started reaching out to scholarship foundations to learn about the process. Talking about him was still hard sometimes, but it was bright every time I told someone about the fundraising ideas or the perimeters of getting this started. We established it wouldn’t be a rushed timeline. He was in the Class of 2031, so we’d start giving out the scholarship then at the latest. That gave us seven or so years to raise enough money to properly endow a scholarship.  There are varying levels of success that the scholarship can achieve, but I'm confident we'll reach our goal to best help the recipients. 

We officially became a fund of the Community Foundation of West Tennessee in June.  It was a big step, but it also helped us challenge ourselves to expand our mission. Yes, we'll endow a scholarship in their memory, but we also want to help make a positive impact in the communities they loved in their honor. We're excited by the prospect of this goal being vast. It leaves us room to be creative, and team up with various partners to spread goodwill. We'll keep you up-to-date on our Facebook page, facebook.com/ntcofund if you want to follow along on our journey!

And as I plan more for this scholarship, I realize the goal we have set will be pretty easy. We’ll fundraise for it, we’ll have a good time expressing that love through creativity, and then we’ll move on to something new to honor them. It might come up once or twice a year as we go through the student application process and present that award. And that’s when it really hit me, that this truly won’t be our only thing, and I started to say this is the first thing.