Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Try
- Becoming Brenda Starr
- Off Beat
- Scattered
- That’s It
- So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
- The Spoon
- Sciatica
- Sweetheart
- A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
- However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
- After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
- As with everything in life, balance is key.
- Slow down, you move too fast…
- Yeah, I know. I have issues.
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
From A Lullaby To Goodbye….
I don’t remember how I first came to follow Patti McKenna on Twitter. Maybe her name attracted me because, well, I’m always up to meet a McKenna.
But I think it was more than that, more than just a chance meeting based on a shared last name. I soon found out she was in the beginning stages of a book project meant to offer hope and healing to anyone who’s lost a child. I approached her, not because I’ve had two miscarriages, but because I’ve lost a sibling—Patrick McKenna, who died when he was four and I was nearly two.
If you are a parent who’s endured the death of an infant or an older child, or even if you’ve lost a grandchild or a sibling or a niece or a nephew, you may realize how little support there is out there for your grief. It truly does seem as if this is the one tragedy everyone wants you to stop talking about, perhaps because it’s so unimaginably horrifying to the listener that, well, she doesn’t want to imagine it could happen to her.
The death of a child, of course, is not catching. But, in general, the one who’s loved and lost is expected to get over it, and certainly not to have lingering sorrow twenty years later—or even five. So the grieving are forced to swallow their sorrow, hoping not to also lose the few friends who’ve somehow managed not to fade into the distant past.
Patti McKenna, who lost a beloved son to SIDS many years ago, still has a spot in her heart that can only be filled by that baby. She knows what it’s like to go on with her otherwise wonderful life, while at the same time thinking of how old he’d be at his younger sister’s wedding, and imagining how much he’d look like his handsome father.
In honor of him, and in honor of all the young ones gone too soon, she’s created a beautiful volume called From A Lullaby To Goodbye. For the moment, it’s only available as a download through her website, but a print version will be on the market in the days ahead.
I’m privileged to have written two pieces about my brother Patrick—an essay and a poem—which Patti included in her book. As I read through the entire ebook, I was reduced to tears many times by the touching true stories of the contributors. These are writers with nothing to hide—their very souls are laid bare. Because of their vulnerability, I believe thousands of readers will be comforted and will come away knowing that their stories, too, deserve to be told.
If you know anyone who’s lost a child, please visit Patti’s website and considering giving this book as a gift.
If you yourself are living with such a loss, I pray From A Lullaby To Goodbye helps to heal your heart.
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