Our story starts on January 8th, 2015 when we were notified of our first child's impending arrival sometime in September. For the next nine months, we had so much fun sharing with our family and friends the amazing news, as many close to us knew the difficulties we experienced in our pursuit of pregnancy. We chose not to find out the sex of our baby, but had settled on baby names for either sex very early on in the process.
On September 13th, 2015 we rushed to the hospital in the wee hours of the night, and at 5:21 AM Doctor V. held up our precious new addition and Josh shouted, "It's a Brooks Joshua!!!” The next four and a half months were the most memorable and love filled months of all our lives. There was not a day that was wished away with our baby-boy and the love he brought to our family is immeasurable. ... He loved meeting new people and had an amazing gift of making everyone he met feel extra special by flashing them that beautifully unforgettable toothless smile. He loved to watch his mommy cook and curiously watched from his Bumbo as she mixed and matched ingredients. He loved to stare into his mommy's eyes after feedings, overfilling her heart with love. Brooks loved coming to watch daddy coach in football and basketball games and practice, and was fascinated with the movement and sounds, as his eyes would track players up and down the playing surface. He loved watching the Wyoming Cowboys, Michigan Wolverines, and Denver Broncos, or at least his daddy's reactions to the ups and downs of the games. He loved singing, reading, and although he was unable to articulate or read the words, it was evident he wanted to join in with us. Brooks' love of learning was evident from his first days. He loved his time with grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins creating life-long memories in such a short amount of time. ... January 28th was like any other day. We woke up early as we had come accustomed as working parents of a four and a half month old. We got Brooks ready for the day and went about our morning routine of feeding, diaper change, and a little time in his bouncer chair while mom and dad finished packing lunches and getting Brooks' daycare bag ready to go. Josh usually took Brooksie to daycare and Jamie picked him up, but on the 28th Josh was running a little behind and had a meeting, thus momma was on drop off duty and got Brooks to his daycare, which he loved! You could easily see the comfort Brooks had at his daycare. He adored his provider as well as the older kids who were so accepting to this new baby who demanded so much attention... Brooksie loved listening to the older kids sing songs, and as well as story time where he intently studied the illustrations and tried to help turn the pages when he had seen all that he needed to see.
Sometime around 2:30PM that day Brooks Joshua took his last breath. He was rushed to Wyoming Medical Center, and after an incredible amount effort by the amazing doctors and nurses we were by his side when he joined our Lord and Savior in the greatest home of all. Our loss was heaven’s gain, Brooks Joshua Anderson had left us physically as fast as he had joined us on that early September morning just a 137 days prior.
We spent hours in the hospital with our sweet boy's body. We had his first hair cut, we sang to him, we prayed over him, we held and loved what was now a shell of our son, one last time…
We may never know why God needed our Brooksie. We may never know why January 28th came and took so much from us in flash. We may never fully understand exactly what Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is. We may never know why a boy thriving in every sense of the word, just didn’t take a breath…
We may never know why or how this happened, but it has become our mission to choose faith in God over fear of the unknown. We choose to let God direct our energies and us as we move forward finding ways to make our terrible pain our new hopeful purpose. Thus we have decided to establish this foundation, host The Play for Brooks Memorial Golf Tournament, fund the “Books from Brooks Memorial Scholarship”, and to make yearly contributions to SIDS research in Brooks Joshua’s name each year to not only honor our late son, but to accomplish our ultimate of goal of understanding and ultimately ending this silent killer of babies…