Sawyer's Giving Heart Project

Soon after Sawyer's death, I knew I wanted to do something. I had to do something.

Not something for me, but something for him. Something for him that would help people. I wanted to fulfill Sawyer's purpose.

It wasn't too long before I started talking about making memory boxes to donate to local hospitals. Then Erik suggested we start taking steps to become a non-profit.

But, after the walk in October we attempted to get some work done on the non-profit, and quickly began to realize that this takes a lot of money - among many other things. Then there is the time, the waiting, the millions of hoops everyone keeps telling me that you have to jump through.

All I want is to relieve one mother of the heartbreaking agony of leaving the hospital with nothing. I know that the day we left the University of Chicago Hospital, as Erik was pushing me away from the place where our son was born and died, I clung to all of Sawyer's things with white knuckles. It was all I had. It is all I have.

And every mother deserves at least that.