ADVANCE/Melissa Burnor, Copyright 2011 River Raisin Publications, Inc., all rights reserved.
Help and hope from hurt
Local woman co-authors book to aid parents who have lost children
Ten years ago Angie Christensen got the news no parent ever wants to hear; no parent is ever prepared to hear. Her 19 year-old son, Nick, had been killed in an automobile accident.
The devastating news forever changed the Ottawa Lake woman’s life. The unbearable grief and horror of losing a child is something no one who hasn’t been through it can imagine.
“Nobody knows what I went through,” Christensen said.
It is something that no one ever wants to think about.
“Part of you doesn’t want to know,” she said.
But Christensen knows all to well the pain associated with losing a loved one. Not only did her son die way too soon, her husband also died unexpectedly about two and a half years ago.
“I have become an expert on grief,” she said from her Sylvania store Angela’s Angels.
A friend introduced Christensen to a support group for parents who had lost children and with that introduction Christensen met Regina Elkhatib of Sylvania, founder of the group FOCUS or Families of Children United in Spirit. Elkhatib had lost her son about five years prior to Christensen.
Christensen and Elkhatib began collecting stories from group members to put in the book titled FOCUS, the acronym for the support group.
There are 18 stories that talk about loved ones and their passing. Each one passed in a different manner, she said: illness, accidents, suicide and even one murder.
The book was self published earlier this summer and is available at Amazon.com and at Angela’s Angels on Main Street in Sylvania where both women will be available Saturday, Sept. 17, for a book signing. Both also continue as facilitators in the group that meets at 7:30 p.m. the fourth Thursday of every month.
Copyright 2011 River Raisin Publications, Inc. For Melissa Burnor's complete story, please see the Sept. 14, 2011, edition of The Advance. To subscribe for home delivery, just call 517-486-2400.
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