'You've given me my son'

Lisa Ryckman, Rocky Mountain News

Saturday, September 15, 2007

The day Maddux Achilles Haggard died, an idea was born.

It began in the hearts and minds of two mothers, one with a dead child and the other who understood her pain and could offer comfort with a camera. It began because Cheryl Haggard wanted something more than just a snapshot of the baby she would never bring home.

She wanted something elegant and artistic, like the photos that graced the walls of the maternity ward and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Presbyterian-St. Lukes. A real portrait of Maddux for the family's own wall, next to the pictures of the Haggard's three older children. Cheryl wanted a way to preserve the memories of the little boy she had loved and lost.

On the last of Maddux's six days on Earth, his parents reached photographer Sandy Puc, who had taken the photos in the hospital that Cheryl admired so much. You have to come tonight, Sandy was told. Tomorrow will be too late.

It wasn't until she arrived at the hospital that Sandy finally understood what they wanted her to do. Take pictures of Maddux tethered to all the tubes and wires that were keeping him alive — and one thing more.

"Would you wait until he passes away and photograph him after that, so Cheryl can really hold him the way she wants?" Mike Haggard asked her.

Sandy was shocked. "A big part of me didn't want to do it, but I knew I had to do it," she said. "So I said yes."

Sandy cried through the photo shoot, and afterward, thanked the Haggards for the privilege. She did it all for free.

"If this is all she has, I want to give her the best I can," Sandy said. She made each photo perfect, then put together a slide show set to music. Then she left the Haggards alone in the studio to watch.

They looked at the pictures over and over again, and when they emerged more than two hours later, eyes puffy and red from crying, Cheryl gave Sandy a big hug.

"Do you know what you've done?' she said. "You've given me my son."

'I knew I had to do it'

Three weeks later, Sandy got another call from the hospital: Could she come photograph a baby who was going to die? When she arrived, the baby was hooked to machines and couldn't be moved. "The only thing the parents could do was touch his hand, touch his head, kiss his head," she said. "How could I tell them, after he passes away, I'll come back and photograph them holding him?"

She called Cheryl and asked her to contact the family and let them know about the photos Sandy had done for her. And that's when the idea bubbled up between them — that every grieving parent should have the chance to have beautiful portraits of their baby, and they shouldn't have to pay for them.

Cheryl printed up brochures on her computer and took them to hospitals. Almost immediately, they received their first call. By April 2005, just two months after Maddux died, they had nonprofit status and a name, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.

As the word spread, more calls came in — about babies born too early, babies born dead and babies about to die. Babies that parents had said hello and goodbye to in almost the same breath. They were all babies that somebody loved and wanted to remember.

"At Christmas time last year, I did eight babies in 12 hours," Sandy said. "It was so depressing and hard. Every time my cell phone would ring, I thought, 'I can't do this anymore.' "

She needed help, so she put out the word herself. A successful portrait photographer, Sandy was a popular lecturer and photography teacher who wrote for professional magazines and had many corporate sponsors. She could easily reach thousands of colleagues, and she began telling them about Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.

The result: a roster today of 3,000 volunteer photographers nationwide and in eight countries. But the group needs many more; it still can only fulfill about 80 percent of the requests they get, executive director Jessica Roe said.

'An angel in heaven'

Grant Oakes, an Aurora wedding photographer, estimates that he has done 30 photo shoots in the past two years, and he takes on every call he can.

"You can't bring these children back, but you can give them something that gives the family some joy," he said. "That's all the reward I need."

Felicia Urban remembers Oakes coming to take pictures of her daughter, Chloe, who was born with a rare lung disease and spent five weeks on life support.

"The whole time she was sick, my heart was broken," she said. "The minute she passed away, I felt better, because I knew she wasn't suffering anymore. Without those pictures, we would have nothing."

Not everyone understands the idea of photographing a baby just before and after death. But although it might seem strange or even morbid to some, bereavement photography was common in the United States until about the 1940s, Sandy said.

Still, some families don't want that kind of keepsake — or don't realize they do until much later, when the memory of their baby's face starts to blur.

"At first, it felt kind of uncomfortable to take the pictures. You think it might be kind of disturbing," said Michelle Martinez, whose son, Justus, was photographed by Oakes a year ago. "But I cherish them now. They're really the only thing I have of him."

The photographers often have to retouch the photos because of the baby's condition. Many pictures can be produced only in black and white, to hide bruising or fingers and lips that have turned blue. "It may sound rather ghoulish, but it can be done beautifully," Oakes said. "How it's done makes all the difference in the world."

Sheila Key's baby girl, Cheyenne, died four hours before the photographer arrived. Not to worry, she was told — no one will know. In the photos, Cheyenne appears to be sleeping peacefully.

"She was still such a perfect, perfect baby," Key said. "My son was holding her and rocking her and singing to her and kissing her on the head. He still doesn't know to this day that she was already gone."

For a day, they were a family. And that's the day the Key family wants to remember. "The pictures have helped us to know that we have an angel who is in heaven to go see later," Sheila Key said. "And that she was just a perfect baby. And she looks like her mommy."

The picture can't change what happened.

"But it changes the way they healed," Sandy said. "We give them something to balance their pain."

And give them a way to remember the perfect face of their perfect baby, and the day they really were able to hold that child for the very first time, and the very last.

"Memories fade," Cheryl said. "Memories fade very fast."

But in the pictures on her wall, Maddux Achilles Haggard lives forever.