Imagine being poor; imagine being poor and enduring the death of a newborn baby. How do you not only overcome that loss but also provide a proper burial for your child when funds are in such short supply?
Jeannie Jaybush, the founder of Seattle Baby Bank has been caring for the city’s most vulnerable new babies for decades. Typically she provides all of the “fun stuff” we think about when discussing baby needs–diapers, bottles, onesies, a Teddy Bear, a car seat. But–sometimes she learns of cases like this, situations where a baby has died and the family does not have the means to provide a proper resting place. When she learned that the other children in the family were willing to forego Christmas gifts in order to have enough money to give their baby sister a proper resting place but had come up short, she reached out to us. Could we help?
As Jeannie wrote: Losing the baby was bad enough, but the added stress of the unmarked grave is unacceptably brutal. There have been far too many unmarked graves in this world. It has to stop somewhere—and if it has to start someplace I guess it’ll be here. We can’t treat people this way.
Indeed, Jeannie, we cannot treat people this way and for that reason, with the help of our donors, the Good People Fund sent Jeannie a check for $709.48; just the amount needed to provide a proper gravestone for this little girl who never had a chance to grow up.
