‘Nothing can change you as much as love’

There are two Laurel Meesters: The one before April 9 and the one since.

That was the day she and her husband, Chris Meester, lost their son Matthias, known as Matty, to Sudden Unexplained Infant Death Syndrome. He was 10 weeks old.

“The moment I woke up and he was gone, I stopped being the person I was,” Laurel said. “I did not know it was possible to feel that much pain and still be alive.”

Matty had been born six weeks early, prompting a two-week stay in the neonatal intensive care unit at Methodist Hospital in Rochester.

“He never backslid,” Meester said. “He was off his ventilator very quickly. We had 10 really good weeks where he was very healthy, and then…

“There’s a special kind of cruelty to it; we thought we were OK, and then we weren’t,” she said.

As pastors, she and Chris “were marginally better prepared than anybody else” to deal with the death of their son.

Laurel is associate pastor at First Lutheran Church in Blooming Prairie; Chris is an associate pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Owatonna.

“I mean, his loss has changed me a lot,” Laurel Meester said, “but nothing can change you as much as love can change you.

“The things that have helped us and are the reason that we survive are our community and our faith,” she said. “We know that God can take this horrific, awful thing and bring some good out of it.”

Like a trip last month to participate in a Feed My Starving Children pack in the Twin Cities.

There were 18 people who went with the Meesters, including Laurel’s parents, two brothers, sister – and all their kids.

It was her sister Julia Gerlofs’ idea.

Laurel’s brother, Joe, is also a minister, “and he’s been very good about helping everybody find ways to support us. So Julia’s way of supporting us is to find good ways to remember Matty.”

She has organized a trip to a nursery, where everyone bought a “Matty plant.”

“Julia planted a tree; my sister-in-law planted a bush; my mom planted a pine tree,” Meester said, “so when we do Christmas at her house, we’ll all hang ornaments on that tree for him.”

Gerlofs also asked “everybody in our family and our close friends get a Teddy bear, because Matthias means ‘bear’ in Celtic,” Meester said. “We called him Matty Bear; that was his name. So we all bought bears, and we’ll donate them to the hospital and to Toys for Tots.

“Those were all Julia’s ideas,” Meester said. “She’s brilliant.”

It’s about more than remembering Matty, though.

“We talked about it this morning and she said, ‘it’s really important to remind our kids in the midst of getting gifts and asking for things and enjoying life that there are lots of people who don’t have what we have,’” Meester said.

As the family continues to navigate life since April 9, Meester thinks a lot about the circumstances around her son’s death.

“Matty died from SIDS, and we did everything that we could have – and were told to do,” she said.

Her brother, Joe Midthun, said the same thing back in April.

“You can do everything right – which Laurel did – and there’s always a chance it will happen – as it did,” said Midthun. “That’s why it’s ‘sudden, unexplained.’ They don’t know. Matty was not on his stomach, there were no blankets.”

Research has indicated there may be genetic markers and metabolic or brain chemical differences that may make infants more susceptible.

“One day we will figure out why this happens and find better ways to prevent it,” Meester said.

Then, as now, it’s the family’s wish that there is purpose in their grief.

While in their case Matty’s death was sudden and unexplained, “there are millions of children who die from things that are preventable,” Meester said, “and if I can – if any of us can – do something to prevent that, to prevent another parents from feeling what we feel, then we will.”

Laurel and Chris Meester speak frankly about death with their daughter Eliora, 4, who one day said, “I have two mommies. The mommy that was here before Matty died and then the mommy I have now…”

While difficult to hear, Laurel admitted, “we want our kids to see us as humans; we want them to see us grieving. We want them to see us taking our grief and making it into good things.”

Her 13 nieces and nephews – and Eliora – joined the FMSC pack. They all bought a bear; they all picked out a “Matty plant.”

The children “are there with us,” Meester said. “We don’t pretend that this is OK, but they don’t have to ‘fix’ our bad day.”

Still, she said, they don’t want their life centered around their grief.

“Chris and I talk a lot about how that isn’t what we want,” she said. “We don’t want Matty’s death to be the core of our existence, because there comes a point where you realize that if the center of your gravity is this really tragic event, slowly, everything else is going to fall away – and you’re stuck with your grief.”

Holidays can be especially hard when people are grieving.

First Lutheran Church in Blooming Prairie is holding a Blue Christmas service at 10:30 a.m. Dec. 21.

“I think people feel this immense pressure to be OK and happy and well before they do anything,” Meester said. “You don’t actually have to be OK to do things like this – you can cry your way through.”

Because of their jobs, she and Chris will both stay busy on Christmas Eve and, to a degree, on Christmas Day.

“We are not putting the pressure on,” Meester said. “Our tradition is not having a tradition. Maybe every year we’ll collect bears and do a pack, or maybe next year we’ll do something totally different.”

Matty will have a Christmas stocking, “and we will fill it with toys and then donate them,” she said.

The Rev. Heidi Heimgartner, senior pastor of First Lutheran in BP, has a phrase: Do it sad.

“It’s not like making (food) packs or buying Teddy bears is going to outweigh this terrible thing,” Meester said, “but it’s not going to be the only thing that comes out of it.”

In the Bible, Matthias is the disciple who replaces Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus.

“And the Bible passage says, ‘and his life will be a testament to the glory of God.’ My husband pointed it out to me a couple months ago,” Meester said.

Their Matthias, she said, “is a testament to the fact that the worst thing in the world can happen … and you can recognize that part of your humanity is being loved and being served by the people who come to support you.”

Her advice to people dealing with loss is simple:

“Don’t assume that you are alone – and let people love you.”