In this episode, Laura and Charlie Beagan talk about their grieving journey after losing their daughter, Rose, unexpectedly. Rose’s death was categorized by SUDU, the fifth leading cause of death among children ages 1-4. The Beagans formed a team to complete a Tough Mudder in order to raise money to support the SUDC Foundation and give a child a scholarship.
Learn more about the SUDC Foundation here.
Follow the Rose Elizabeth Foundation:
-Website: rosiebeagan.com
-Instagram: @rosiebeagan
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A LOOK INSIDE THE EPISODE:
TM: Can you talk about your family and support system that have helped you during your grieving?
L: I think immediately when something like this happens, you want to be the person that’s giving the support. It was very strange being in a position of being the recipient of it, but pretty immediately, obviously our family, but also just like complete strangers and our community or people that we worked with our parish family, the nursery school that Rosie went to just people from that community. We had meals delivered to our house every single night until like the beginning of April. Someone put a cooler on the side of our house and just every single night, someone we didn’t even know, delivered a meal for us. The way that our work, both of our companies responded to it, just like take the time, whatever time you need, whatever support we can give you. We didn’t go back to work until maybe February. We both took basically a full month off just to process and be able to be in a place where we could step through an office door again and be able to see people. Those things still aren’t particularly easy, but just the way that people rallied around us, I think, was pretty miraculous. But again, also very strange being on the receiving end of it. And I remember thinking, like, I don’t want this. I don’t want to be in a position where I need this from people. But also, obviously, just so grateful for all of it. I think that’s kind of what sparked our foundation thoughts. You know, this is a unique situation and a unique story. I think Rose, in her short life, was able to touch a lot of lives in our community. We did feel like we had this amazing community of people that rallied behind us, and that were there to support us. All anyone wanted to do was help. Like, what can we do to help? What do you need? What can we do? Everyone just wants to help. We didn’t know and I still don’t know when people ask me around the anniversary, around the holidays, what do you need? What can we do? I don’t even know what’s going to make myself or Charlie feel better in these moments. There’s very few like tangible things that people can do to help sometimes, but the foundation was a way for us to funnel some of that energy and also give people that are around us and supporting us like a tangible thing to be able to do to feel like they’re helping and that, you know, the biggest thing that we can do is, is help Rose’s legacy and her story continue on and people still talk about her and hear about her and to see a lot of positive and good being done in the world because of Rose and the community that is supporting us in this foundation because of her. So, I think that’s just been kind of the one thing that has really helped me be able to give people an answer that they want to help, of how they can help. They can’t give me answers, they can’t bring her back, they can’t take away the pain, but they can come to a Tough Mudder. They can roll around in some mud and have a day with us where like we’re doing it for Rose, and we’re raising money for Rose. To be able to support grieving parents and support the SUDC foundation and give a scholarship to a child to Rose’s nursery school, that wouldn’t be able to go without us being able to sponsor that child. I think it’s a tangible thing that people can do and in a situation where there’s so much intangible, there’s so much that you can’t wrap your arms around with our story, but it’s something that people can do.
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