Help Memorialize Baby Angel Xander

The words of Haley Ann Eisenhart-

"I met baby Xander after his heart had stopped beating and he had taken his last natural breath. In the local Emergency room, I held him. Under the incubator with one arm, the other was giving him chest compressions with two fingers. He was two months old, I was 18 years old.

This was my first infant cardiac arrest.  At one point his mother entered the room. We made direct eye contact. She collapsed to the floor seeing me holding her lifeless child. We were all trying so hard. Doctors, nurses, myself. I kept up hope.

We kept trying and fighting the odds. The odds won. They pronounced him and all at once my adrenaline and hope drained away. My heart sank. I looked down, the tile floor became cloudy. I ran out of the EMS entrance as tears ran down my face. 

For years I thought of Xander. I questioned why I couldn't help him, why I couldn't bring him back. As a part of the code team, I knew I had perfect compressions, that was my job. I didn't know how this could happen.

Instead of going to the critical stress debriefing offered by the Hospital I worked in, I attended his funeral. I was the ONLY one from the emergency personnel who did. I will never forget feeling out of place while standing in the long line to say words to his mother. When it was my turn, by my surprise, Deborah recognized me and thanked me for attending. We both cried.

I kept his obituary and often visited the same cemetery he was interned in. I also have close family members at the same site. Though I knew where to look, I could never find his grave. 

After 10 years, I finally reached out to his mother. I found her name in his obituary. I didn't know what to expect, it went better that I could have hoped for. We finally had each other to remember him. We talked about our sadness from that day and our families now. We became friends.

The other day I finally felt comfortable enough to mention to Deborah that I had gone looking for baby Xander's grave. I learned he had no plaque, no marker at all. My heart sank. I understood how with other children, and more on the way, she just didn't have the resources. 

The thought that I could have, and most likely did walk over his grave unknowingly while searching for it crushed me. He is someone. He still means the world to his mother, his family, and me. He changed my life forever.

I am the mother of three boys now. Though I wish I could just go out and buy him a grave marker, I can't. I am asking for help. Help from others who have lost patients who have for some reason stuck with them, help from those who have lost children and know they were someone and deserve to be recognized. I'm asking for help from anyone who is kind-hearted and is willing to donate even the smallest amount. This way he can be remembered alike those all around him are.

He now lies as he had for over a decade in an unmarked grave. I don't want people stepping on him, not knowing the angel that lies beneath. Please help his mother and I show the world who he is, and that he is forever loved. Please help us remember him for years to come, to have a place his siblings and family can find to remember him and pay their respects."

-Haley Ann Eisenhart