'I wonder if my daughter's death will be as beautiful as my son's': Mother's agonising wish as she watches her second child die in eight months
Losing a child is unbearable for any parent and a nightmare which, unfortunately, some have to live through. A mother from Illinois has lost two children in the span of around eight months and revealed that she feared that her little girl's death "wouldn't be as beautiful" as her older brother's.
Stefanie Boyce looked on with "profound honor" as her nine-year-old daughter Brooklyn took her last breath after she battled a rare condition. Around 8 months before Brooklyn passed away, Stefanie had to go through the sad death of her 11-year-old son Jayden who passed away peacefully as he was lying between his parents. The siblings put up a brave and valiant fight and had the same rare and also terminal disorder.
As Brooklyn came close to dying, Stefanie started asking herself some very difficult questions that no mother or father would ever want to ask themselves. "What parent has to think these thoughts, 'I wonder if my daughter's death will be as beautiful as my son's?," said 37-year-old Stefanie from Illinois. "My greatest fear was B’s passing would be sudden and tragic. A seizure. A morning I’d find her not breathing," Stefanie said referring to Brooklyn as B and Jayden as J.
"Some way that I couldn’t say good-bye. Some way not as holy or sacred as Jayden’s," Stefanie added. Since Brooklyn's death, Stefanie has been able to experience some sort of a twisted "peace" in knowing that her two babies are together again and are playing in heaven. "B is probably dragging him around Heaven giving him the tour even though J knows his way around," Stefanie stated in a tear-jerking tribute to her children. "And I bet J is chuckling and going along with it as she does," she woefully joked.
Monday, August 6 was the day that Brooklyn "received her crown of life" and was surrounded by her family which included her father as well as her six-year-old sister Ellie. Brooklyn was also fondly referred to as "Beeba" and had a beautiful and contagious laugh that could light up any room. On the same day of the week, last year on November 13, her brother and best friend Jayden passed away as he lay next to his mother and father.
Brooklyn and Jayden had battled against the Sanfilippo Syndrome which is a regressive and also metabolic disorder which tends to affect around one in 70,000 children. Young people who have this condition, progress up to a certain point before they slowly begin to lose their ability to walk, talk, and also eat. Most people with such a condition will not live beyond the age of 20 years old.