Dear Henry

Do me a big favor and take care of this guy.



His name it Renny. He's the son of a friend of mine and Uncle Bill's, and like you he was just too beautiful to die. You spent time with his daddy, John, when we all went to Spain for Bill and Cristina's wedding.

-----Original Message-----
From: Deborah Schafer [mailto:dlschafer@earthlink.net]
Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2005 2:34 PM
To: dlschafer@earthlink.net
Subject: Some very sad news about our son

Dear friends,

We are devastated to be writing you to say that our beautiful baby died on Monday, May 16th. He was seven months old. There are no words to express the depth of our sorrow or the feeling of loss and emptiness that we will carry with us forever. It is hard to make any sense of this tragedy; it is just so very, very sad.

We are awaiting the results of some final tests, but the working hypothesis for how this happened is that his immune system was weakened from fighting a respiratory virus and somehow he as exposed to pneumococcal meningitis, possibly a strain not covered by the immunization. Visits to doctors on Friday, May 6th and again the following Monday for worsening cold symptoms did not point to meningitis. On the morining of Wednesday, May 11th, he was listless and pale and was rushed to the emergency room. The hospital doctors believe that the bacteria may have passed from his newly forming sinuses to his brain in less than 24 hours. His small body was thrown into sepsis shock. Every possible treatment was given to him, and he fought for his life... he died five days later.

No baby should die this way. In lieu of flowers, we'd like to corral the power of our mourning into something positive by inviting you to help support an organization that educates parents about meningitis so hopefully some families will never have to go through this. We will get back in touch with you soon about the details.

It is going to take a long time for us to work through this, so if you reach out and we do not respond, please understand that we are grieving.
In just seven months, our boy had deeply changed our lives. We loved him and miss him so much that we cannot stop sobbing.

Thank you for all your support and love,

Deb & John