In Memory of Ethan and Pip

This fund has been created for Samantha Costley (Nowak). As many of you know, Sam lost her only child, her son, Ethan Maynard, suddenly and without known cause, on October 12, 2020. In a horrific addition to losing Ethan, Sam also lost one of her girls, her Italian Greyhound, Pipin two days prior.

To know Sam is to know that she lived FOR Ethan. There are mothers, parents, and then there are human beings like Sam. Ethan was her everything. Every part of her life and her own self revolved around him. To know Sam is to know that she also loves her girls and losing Pip suddenly as well has left her without a vital comfort that Pip always gave her.

To know Sam is to know that she has faced more adversity, pain and loss in her 42 years than most of us will experience in an entire lifetime. Even still, Sam isn’t just the strongest person I know, I imagine Sam is the strongest person anyone knows. But this is a surreal amount for anyone to survive. She’s dedicated her life to being there for countless others. She prefers to sit with the world’s broken to try and help in some way than to sit with the great. And if she’s sitting with the great, it’s to get help for the broken. This is an extraordinary woman who has lost the one true thing she had in this life, it was always Ethan. She considered it her purpose in life to raise an amazing man and she certainly succeeded as Ethan was just like his mother, extraordinary.

We cannot take her pain. We cannot heal her heart. We cannot replace what she has lost. I know I have felt completely helpless. But we aren’t helpless. We can support her in this way so she knows she is not alone. So she can grieve and receive the help she will undoubtedly need to survive the loss of Ethan.

I created this fund for Sam, in both Ethan’s memory as well as Pipin’s memory. All donations go directly to Sam in what is, without question, her time of greatest need. She’s shouldered veterinary bills, end of life expenses, on top of daily care for her mother, Nancy Nowak, as well. The sole purpose of creating this fund is to help a woman who has helped so many others. To try and ease any stress she is under that we can help her with. To simply give her our love and support and, above all else, our respect for her intolerable degree of loss and for her as our friend.

Please help me in making a donation, no matter the size, as well as widely sharing this fund on all platforms, to give back to someone who has given us all so much and who has suffered a loss that I cannot even begin to understand. Sam saved my life. It’s my turn to save hers.

With My Grateful Heart,
Nick