Kash’s Story
This chapter of our family’s story begins April 1, 2019, the day our youngest son Kash was born. My wife Stephanie and I immediately knew our family was complete, with Kash being our third. Kash was by far our happiest baby; every picture we have his smile shinned through and his eyes twinkled. His two older siblings Lincoln (8) and Brynlee (4) just adored Kash with every ounce of their heart! Lincoln, the mature young man he has always been, took on the role of a protector, while Brynlee, took on the role as a little mini mom, always so tender with her little brother, as if he were her equal. During the seven months and sixteen days that Kash was here on earth, everything was seamless and dreamy.
Then November 17, 2019 came and changed the future of our family forever. The unimaginable day of having to say goodbye to Kash was something that we could never have been prepared for. It was a beautiful fall Sunday in northern Utah. I had put Kash down for his routine morning nap around 10:30am and went outside to finish up some yard work. Less than 2 hours later my wife asked me to wake Kash up for his afternoon feeding because we had a few errands to run as a family. Opening the door to his room my heart stopped. I knew something was wrong, but questions just filled my head. How? How could this happen? How DID this happen? Why? Why did this happen? I hollered to my wife downstairs as she ran up calling 911. Watching her perform CPR on our son while he just laid there, lifeless, something no parent should ever experience. This feeling numbly consumed me for the next several month.
Fourteen weeks later, after calling every single week for any information, we finally got a call from the Medical Examiner. She said it best when she said “it is as if he was dreaming such a beautiful dream of Angels that he just decided to follow the Angels and took his last breath”. We had lost our son to Sudden Unexplained Infant Death Syndrome. (S.U.I.D.S). Nothing caused Kash to stop breathing. Nothing could have been done to prevent his death. The only tiny ounce of closure the Medical Examiner could give us was there was possibly some type of neurological abnormality that could not be explained. The questions of how and why still consumes every thought of my being.
My wife has expressed her grief through writing. I have only read up until this point in our grief journey, this is the first piece I have written in sharing our story of Kash. Watching my family grieve has been, emotionally, the hardest thing I have experienced throughout this journey. Each one of them grieves so differently and I just want to take away the extreme pain from them. I think one of the most difficult things I have experienced in the last eleven months has been the lack of communication from other men. Virtual platforms are filled with women reaching out to one another. I have yet to connect with a single dad who is willing to reach out and exchange words around the topic of child loss. It is possible I am not looking hard enough, but I hope this piece can help spark some type of community of men and dads who just need to communicate in any form.
-Shaun Lezer and Family
