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Personal Narrative: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

488 Words2 Pages

A baby’s cry is an unmistakable sound to the ears of parents, but one morning, the Sweeney’s were not woken up by their baby, as they typically anticipated. Instead, they awoke, abnormally well rested, to find their three-month old daughter, Helena, lying in her crib cold and breathless. At the age of 11, I had been to several funerals, but I had never mourned the life of someone who had not lived. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome was hard to make sense of.
My recent spring vacation had consisted of taking care of Helena as a mother’s helper and I had spent several weekends changing diapers, mixing formula, and watching over her brothers and sisters. After she died, I became overwhelmed with all these ideas of how she would never again giggle at my silly faces, never learn to ride a bike, let alone walk, and never take part in any childlike adventures. This unforeseeable tragedy changed my life forever. …show more content…

When faced with conflicts, I have always been someone who searches for the root of a problem. The death of an infant that I considered to be family left me agonizing about how and why this happened. I refused to believe that this was just one of the ugly things that happens in this world and forced myself to look at the situation from alternate perspectives. Did God have some sort of plan for this baby? Did her death prevent her from enduring some horrific life? Was she just not meant for this world? Whatever the reason, I concluded that this was not an act of evil and that her death had some greater

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