This year on The Band Back Together Project, we are curating and adding the names of your children who are no longer with us and we will be posting our Wall of Remembrance on Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. 

We welcome you – any of you – to share the names of those you are missing.

Please click this link to add the name of your child (or a child you love) to our wall so we can remember them.

I never expected to be a mother at 17. I also never expected to be joining the baby loss club at 17 either. Walking out of that hospital in Tucson on that late August day, I knew that my life had fundamentally changed.

Instead of a baby in my arms, I carried a potted plant and a heavy heart out of the doors of University Hospital.

Sarah Beth Sluszka was born on August 22, 1991.

She died August 24, 1991.

I don’t know what caused her death. I refused an autopsy; I didn’t want my baby being cut up like a science project.

Knowing what I know now, I believe her death was related to a lack of oxygen due to a cord accident.

Sarah never cried, opened her eyes, or moved on her own.

Making the decision to take your child off of life support is heartbreaking.

Making that decision at 17 changes the trajectory of your life. I had no life experience to draw from. My parents only advised, but did not make this decision for me. I alone chose and therefore changed my life forever.

While I miss wanting to know who Sarah could have been over these past 28 years, I am happy with the person and parent I am today.

I went on to have four sons, a (step) daughter, and one granddaughter (so far!) and they have truly been the lights in my life.

In them, I see who Sarah could have been, what she would have been like. Like her siblings, she would have been an amazing human.

August 22 is Be an Angel Day.

Every year, I ask my friends to do one random act of kindness in Sarah’s name on that day.

It helps me to know that people are thinking about her and doing good in her name in the world. I’ll ask you all to do that next year through.

The Band, just put your children’s names onto our wall.

Together we can spread kindness and remember our children with happy hearts.