Welcome to a new blog by Charlie’s Corner. Our plan is to have family members share things going on in their lives and around them sharing what we have learrned, observed, enjoyed, etc…
So I will kick it off!! It has been 2+ years since we welcomed Charlie into our little world and we can never imagined where he would take us on this crazy journey. We were lucky and blessed to welcome Charlie who was born on big brother Keegan’s birthday. After a few short happy healthy days our lives were forever changed. We lost Charlie all to soon, we miss him everyday and we will do our best to honor him for the rest of our days.
We have been blessed by great family, friends and community continually showing us support in this life long journey. Sarah and I quickly learned that we needed to learn how to accept this love and support and embrace it. And we have tried to do our best at that. We started Charlie’s Corner Foundation to honor Charlie and to also create great events to bring this community that has shared in our grief together to have fun while raising money for great charities. We are proud of the way the foundation has taken off, we have hosted two golf outings, the first annual Glow in The Park Lantern Walk (second one coming up September 16th), and ran a marathon with Sean Collins and many other tributes as well.
And speaking of marathons Brian Davies and his sister Michelle are running the Detroit Marathon October 21st and will be raising money for our foundation and Lurie Children’s Hospital.
Brian and I were great friends in college, always having fun and causing trouble, and maybe skipping class for an NCAA College Football battle. We had a great friendship and then over the years through too much late night drinking and bad decisions our relationship faded away. It had probably been almost 10 years since Brian and I last spoke when Charlie passed. Soon after Charlie passed I received a text from Brian sending condolences. Brian and I kept a text chain going and he let me know he had decided to run the marathon and raise money to honor Charlie. Through our discussions we soon discovered we had both named one of our son’s Keegan, a fun coincidence and we can’t wait for the two Keegans to meet. Without me babbling on two much there are two points I want to make about this story:
1. If you know someone going through a hard time, or has lost someone or battling a disease, reach out to them.
One little text/phone call/email can really help that person, it means alot and can do great things for
someone in there time of need.
2. Relationships matter!- I said it during the eulogy at Charlie’s funeral and I will say it again, cherish
those relationships who have and make them as good as you can. You never know what is going to happen each
and every day so do your best to keep in touch with the people you care about!
I am forever grateful that Brian reached out and rekindled our relationship and can’t wait to cheer him on in Detroit October, 21st, https://www.charliescorner.org/events/2018-detroit-marathon/, if you want to donate click the link.
I look forward to having people write blogs on here and seeing where this goes. For now, as always, we can never say enough thanks to all who have supported this foundation in its first two years and I can never thank Charlie enough for all he has taught me and taking me on a journey that any child takes their parents on.
Keep your relationships strong!
Brendan Cavanagh
