Helping My Family Through an Incredibly Difficult Season ❤️

I’ve started and stopped writing this more times than I can count. Asking for help is hard for me, especially when it feels like I’ve had to do it more than once.

Before anything else, I want to acknowledge the people who have already helped our family financially along the way. Some of you have stepped in more than once, and I know that generosity has come at a cost to you, too. We have not forgotten what you’ve done for us. You have helped us through moments when we genuinely didn’t know what we were going to do, and we are more grateful than I can adequately express.

The difficult reality is that our circumstances haven’t improved, and we’re at a point where we need help again. I wish that weren’t the case. I wish we could manage everything on our own, and I wish I didn’t have to keep asking.

This past year has been one our family never could have imagined.

We lost our son Gavin in a car accident. He was 19 years old, and our lives have been forever changed.

People talk about grief as missing someone, and of course we miss him. But grief is also the thousand little things that make up a life together. It’s sitting down to a family dinner and realizing the life of the party isn’t there. It’s the holidays without his hilarious jokes, his personality, and the laughter that always seemed to follow him.

It’s the piano sitting quietly when it used to be played constantly. Gavin brought music into our home and our family gatherings. There was something special about having him at the piano, filling the spaces between conversations and bringing music into ordinary moments. Now, even the quiet feels different.

It’s being in the kitchen watching my wife preparing food and instinctively missing Gavin as her sous chef. They loved to cook together. He helped with all the food prep, and loved sharing pictures of the things he made, celebrating each other’s creations, and sharing that little part of our lives. There are still so many moments when I want to send him a picture of something we’ve cooked, just as we always did, before remembering that I can’t.

Those are the things people don’t always see when they think about losing someone. It’s not just the big moments and milestones. It’s losing the person who made ordinary days feel fuller, funnier, louder, and more alive.

Our family is learning how to live in a world without him, and we’re doing everything we can to help one another through it. We’ve been attending therapy together because grief affects every member of a family differently, and we want to give our children and ourselves the support we need. Those appointments have been important to us, but the therapy copays have accumulated into thousands of dollars over the course of this year.

At the same time, my wife’s health has deteriorated to the point that she cannot return to work right now. She has been dealing with significant medical problems that affect her ability to function day to day. Losing her income while facing ongoing medical expenses has put our family under enormous financial pressure.

Samantha is also facing two surgeries. She has a brain tumor that needs to be removed, and that surgery carries the risk of losing the hearing in that ear, along with other serious complications. Before that surgery, she is scheduled to have a prosthesis replaced in her other ear in an attempt to improve her hearing (she has significant hearing loss on this side due to a childhood condition). We’re trying to do everything we can to preserve my wife’s hearing before facing the uncertainty of the tumor removal.

Samantha’s upcoming surgery requires an upfront payment, and we’re struggling to come up with the money needed to keep it scheduled for 10/26. On top of that, we still have thousands of dollars in therapy copays and other medical expenses from this year.

We’ve tried to manage everything as best we can. We’ve accepted help when it was offered, made difficult choices, and kept trying to figure out the next step. But with my wife’s inability to work, the loss of income, and the ongoing medical expenses, we simply cannot keep up.

It is incredibly hard to put this out there. I worry about asking too much of the same people who have already been so generous. I know everyone has their own bills, families, and challenges, and I never want anyone to feel obligated to help us.

But I’ve also realized that continuing to struggle privately doesn’t make these expenses go away, and it doesn’t change the fact that I need medical care and our family needs support.

So we’re asking for help with our upcoming surgeries, our accumulated medical expenses, and the therapy costs that have added up while our family has been trying to navigate life after losing Gavin. Any money raised will go toward these expenses and helping us get through this season while my wife continues to work toward receiving the medical care she needs.

If you’re able to contribute, we are grateful beyond words. If you’re not in a position to give, sharing this with someone who might be able to help means something, too. There is absolutely no expectation that anyone should give what they cannot afford.

I wish more than anything that I could write about something different. I wish Gavin were here making us laugh around the dinner table, playing the piano, and stealing bites while we cooked together. I wish our family didn’t have to learn how to navigate holidays and everyday life without him.

We can’t change what has happened, and we can’t make this year any less painful. We’re just trying to find our way through it, take care of our family, and get the medical care my wife needs.

To everyone who has already helped us, thank you. Thank you for showing up for us when things felt impossible. Thank you to those who have checked in, listened, shared our grief, and continued to care about our family.

And to anyone who is able to help us now, thank you for helping us carry some of what has become too much to manage alone.

With love and gratitude, thank you for being here.

Nate Cornia