Sydney’s 1st Year Angelversary

To acknowledge our son’s 1st year Angelversary (1st birthday in Heaven) on October 1st, we headed to Oregon to visit the Angel of Hope memorial. We decided to leave shiny good luck quarters all over the city in Seattle and Oregon for our son. Each quarter was marked with little heart stickers and placed in spots that are special to us, in places where we would have taken our son. It was our way of spreading his love and expressing our love for our boy while giving hope & luck to others. We wanted to be generous and use quarters instead of pennies. Before heading to Oregon, we stopped at one of our favorite bakeries, Macrina, and my husband left a special quarter on the creamer station counter top for someone to find. We also stopped at Costco and left a quarter outside by the shopping carts. Once we arrived in Oregon, we left more quarters at the Angel of Hope. We left one at West Elm near a lovely Libra mug. Our son’s birth sign is Libra since his birthday is October 1st. We continued to leave special quarters in restaurants and anywhere we would have taken our boy.

This was our second visit to the memorial for our son Sydney. Our first visit was last April. We brought an autumn plant with a “Happy Birthday” ribbon, a pumpkin candle to light and we released orange balloons for our autumn angel, Sydney. The balloons were released with love and had loving messages we wrote from us and our family members. Of course, the messages included Sydney’s furry siblings, our pets: Lei-la and Kona (shepherd mixed girl and a French Bulldog boy). We brought our pets on the visit too.

It’s been a hard year without our son in our arms. It was nice to honor him on this very special day. It feels comforting to come to the Angel of Hope to acknowledge our son and celebrate his short but joyous life.

This visit felt even more special this time because I’m carrying his younger sibling, a Rainbow (a miracle baby conceived after the loss of a child). On our previous visit to this memorial, we saw a rainbow in the sky shortly after we released balloons for our son. We feel that our son sent us a rainbow in the sky that day and we also feel like he had a hand in sending us our Rainbow baby. We look forward to the day when we can visit the Angel of Hope to honor our son with his little sibling in our arms.