Two Mothers, One Journey: Saying Good-Bye To Jaleel...

Friday, September 23, 2011

Saying Good-Bye To Jaleel...

Posted Date: : Jun 14, 2006 11:36 PM

I know I just blogged but want to let you know about his funeral...

I am going to re-type the obituary... Allen's sister in law Joann wrote this and we thought it was very beautiful:

A celebration of life for Jaleel Keshaun Kitchings: May 18,2006- June 13,2006. The funeral will be at 11am Friday June 16th,2006

OBITUARY:

On Tuesday morning, June 13,2006, God looked down on earth and chose another beautiful flower from his garden. That beautiful flower was Jaleel Keshaun Kitchings, born May 18,2006 to Allen & Stacey. He was with us for only a short while, but the love we shared with him was overwhelming. We thank God for giving Jaleel to us. Chershing the beautiful memories of Jaleel are his parents, Allen & Stacey. His brothers Allen Kitchings Jr. and Nicholas Shapiro. Shemika Langford, Anitra Kitching, and Michaela Fulcher are his sisters. Jaleel's grandparents Mr. & Mrs. Richard Fulcher and Pearlean Kitchings. He has a host of aunts,uncles, neices, nephews, and cousins.

J is for the joy you gave us

A is for your astonishing smile

L is for the love you brought into our lives

E is for the everlasting love we will always have for you

E is for eternity that you will spend with God

L is for the laughter you brought us

I asked to have this poem read at the service thank you Ski for the poem. I cry every time I read it so Allen's daughter Anitra will read it:

Just Those Few Weeks
by Susan Erlin
For those few weeks-
We had you to ourselves.
And that seems too short of time
To be changed so profoundly.

In those few weeks-
We came to know you...
And to love you.
You came to trust us with your life.
Oh, what a life I had planned for you!

Just those few weeks-
When We lost you,
I lost a lifetime of hopes,plans, dreams, and aspirations...
A slice of my future simply vanished overnight.

Just those few weeks-
It wasn't enough time to convince others
How special and important you were.
How odd, a truly unique son has left us, oh so soon

You were just those few weeks my little one
You darted in and out of my life too quickly.
But it seems that's all the time you needed
To make my life so much richer-
And give me a small glimpse of eternity.

*We changed a few things in the poem to fit Jaleel.*

We will have a wake tomorrow night at 7PM and it will be an open casket for family & friends who want to say good-bye to our precious little boy Jaleel. The funeral we will have at 11am Friday, that will be an open casket followed by the burial, (we ended up just having a graveside service) and Jaleel will be buried next to Allen's father who died of cancer many years ago. I will put in Jaleel's casket his pacifier and the Mary J Blige C.D. he loved and would fall asleep to.

This is the program from his funeral:

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Jennell

My name is Jennell. I am a chronically ADD mother of four, long term shacking up with the man of my dreams (really ten years in and I still love the way he smells), have some furbabies and four babies of my own. My oldest daughter Kirsten is 13 (going on twenty one!). Kinsley is my second daughter and the sweetest 6 year old ever! Teague is my three year old son. I also have a daughter, Naylen, who would be five years old now. We lost her to SIDS in 2006.
I am not the kind of person who can find the tape and the last pair of scissors I located I tripped over. I have never made it home from the grocery without the bread getting squished. I love to make lists I never complete, chalkboard paint addict, future Country Living feature (I live in a decrepit old, drafty house that I am s...l...o...w...l...y... remodeling, big fan of run on sentences and fragments, have poor punctuation and am pretty repetitive, left handed, live in the South and hate sweet tea (yes I am a traitor), and when I follow politics I am a liberal Democrat with enough parental sense to wish I was a Republican.
I am starting school to pursue my nursing degree. I hope to use my career platform to share safe sleep strategies more successfully. I currently run a small non-profit called Naylen's Hope. We offer baby beds for families in need of one and safe sleep seminars for interested groups.

About Stacey

My name is Stacey and I live in Maine with my wonderful husband Jason, for three years. I have three children Michaela who is a hormonal 13 year old and my son Nick who is a mathematical wizard. I also have another baby Jaleel who was born May 18, 2006 and tragically died June 13, 2006 at 26 days old due to a bed sharing accident.

It has been over five years since my son died and now I educate people on safe sleep and in Jan I will be going to school to work towards my MSW (Masters in social work). I love educating the public on safe sleep and want to do it as my career.

Two Journeys...A Common Path

This is two stories really. Two different women from different places, in different life situations who ended up living through the same nightmare of child loss. This is a compilation of the private journal writings from two different women as they struggled through the loss of their infant children. Naylen and Jaleel were both born and died in 2006. Almost immediately we, Jennell and Stacey, began writing, chronicling our grief journey. We didn't know each other when we lost our children. We met later, crossing paths because of our shared loss. We have both decided to share our private writings in hopes that other people grieving can see that some aspects of grief are universal. Perhaps you can identify with something from our journeys. There is comfort in community and with grief there is nothing off limits, no uncharted territory, and anything goes.