HURON, Ohio — Rachel Meinke is a quilter. One particular piece she made recently has great purpose. It was for a close friend of hers who lost her baby late in pregnancy.
"In that moment you want to support somebody, but you don't know how. It's such a broken time," Meinke said.
So she provided a listening ear, "She (her friend) said, 'I feel like a terrible mom because I won't have anything at my baby's funeral that's pretty.'"
Through her friend's grief, Meinke, who owns Carpenter's Daughter Quilt Shop in Helena, Ohio, provided a solution.
"I think, 'You know, God has blessed me with this quilt shop. We can fix this,'" Meinke said. "So I asked her, I say 'What do you think about a casket quilt? Traditionally they're made of flowers, but we can make one that's a quilt.'"
It's now a precious keepsake for her friend in honor of baby Patrick.
Through her friend's loss, Meinke learned about the Abbey Rose Foundation, which provides support through books, cuddle cots and burial gowns.
It's all in the name of a life lost too soon.
"She was almost five months old. On April 7, we got the phone call at school that she did not wake up from her nap," Suzi Kudrin said.
She and her husband, Sam Kudrin, started the foundation after their daughter Abbey Rose's death in 2011. The Kudrins want to provide the support that wasn't available to them at the time of their loss.
Based in Huron, the Abbey Rose Foundation primarily helps patients of Firelands Hospital in Sandusky and Fisher-Titus Hospital in Norwalk, but anyone can reach out for support or books. The foundation even provided resources to victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting.
"As much as we hate that there's so many people we've had to help, it's something that's something that's going to happen no matter what and I'm glad we can be there for them, and it helps us heal as well," Kudrin said.
Kudrin said sometimes that the cry for help doesn't come immediately.
"We do a Christmas remembrance ceremony every year. We just had ours this past weekend. We had a lady who lost her child almost 30 years ago and this is the first time she ever came and she said, 'I've never dealt with it and now that I know I have the support, I think it's time to start dealing with it,'" Kudrin said.
The foundation is growing in its services and now offers two trade groups, one specifically for parents who have lost a child and the other for siblings who have lost a sibling.
Meinke and her friend now volunteer for the Abbey Rose Foundation. Meinke makes mementos for families, and if you know how to sew, you can be a big help by making burial gowns.
"Wedding gowns get donated to the foundation and we have sewers to sew them," Meinke said. "It's hard to find people to do that."
If you would like to help the Abbey Rose Foundation, click here.
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