This is a story about when my nearly 7-month-old son passed away from SIDS.

That night he was sharing a room with a three-and a-half-year older brother. In the morning I went to get the boys up and was playing with the older one and had not noticed a problem with the baby. Big brother exclaimed, "There was a fire in Kollin's bed last night!" I still thought he was just sleeping and went to check on him to find him dead and cold.

The police were called and my house was chaotic. When the police were there, big brother tried to tell them that there was a fire in his brother's bed during the night. I went to be questioned at the police station and my son went with friends to church as it was Sunday and that is where he wanted to go.

After I was done with the police, I went to find him. Church was over and I found him at the home of our pastor with the pastor's wife caring for him. He told me again about the fire and that's when I realized he might have witnessed his brother's actual death. I looked at the pastors wife and asked her what did he see? She was a school teacher with many years working with young children and she gently asked him to tell her about the fire.

He told us that there was a fire in Kollin's bed, and it poked him, but it didn't hurt him, and he said "I love you" and "goodbye." When I was buying socks for my older sons to wear to the funeral, in the checkout line, my son said, "There were armies in my room the night Kollin died."

My son handled his brother's death very well for a short while, but when he met a newborn cousin, he asked when she was going to die. When he went to school and was away from his family, he was scared that we were going to die while he was away, and even when he was older like 11 or 12 when his father was delayed at work for a couple hours, he asked if his dad was dead when I had told him he would be late coming home.