Our beautiful son Bowen passed away unexpectedly in February 2022. There is no known cause of death. Bowen was full of life. He was such a big capable kid, but, at nearly two and a half years old, he was so so little too. He had the biggest smiles and even bigger belly giggles. His giggles were always right at the surface – they were either rolling over or bubbling up ready to break through.
It was an ordinary, beautiful night. We were all together, Bowen made sure of it, even our doggy Linden. We read our stories as usual. Bowen cracked jokes and finished lines when we read too slowly. Our daughter Bella squawked and cooed. We laughed. We hugged. We said our “I love you’s”. Our family energy was so light, content and loving. Bedtime could not have been any more beautiful and ordinary. But then, Bowen didn’t wake up.
We will spend the rest of our lives missing him, hoping he is loved, wherever he is, even more than we love him here, and wishing he got to experience more of life. Here, in this space, we are grateful for every second we had with Bowen. We are grateful we got to be Bowen’s family. And, we want to remember Bowen forever.
Bowen spread an unimaginable amount of love and joy in his short life. Since he cannot any longer, our goal is to share as much of his love and joy as we can. Today, we want to create a space where giggles spill over, where tears roll freely and where both are met with love.
Where does "Bowen does that one day" come from?
In his last months, Bowen got to watch more tv, especially once Bella was born. We were slowly exploring new movies. Some movies we thought he would love, he was terrified of or bored of, and others we thought would be scary, he found hilarious. He kept us on our toes, and we loved every second of it. Madagascar was his most recent ‘new movie’. He loved it. One day after Bella was born we were watching Madagascar and he was bouncing around soaking every word in, then, in the scene where lion is struggling and ends up falling down a waterfall, between hilarious giggles, Bowen yelled “Bowen do that one day” and continued to giggle at poor lion. We erupted into laughter, and rewound the movie, with the camera ready. As his vocabulary evolved “Bowen does that one day” was born. From that moment on, he knew he would get big giggles out of mom and dad every time he said it. When the comedic timing was right, he would tell us the next practical thing (tie baby sister’s shoe laces) or completely ridiculous thing (fish on an iceberg with a polar bear) ‘Bowen was going to do one day’. We always giggled and said “you want to do that one day!?”.
