Sign up for Meridian’s Free Newsletter, please CLICK HERE
The following story was featured by a Washington newspaper. It tells the story of Alex Clawson, who recently lost his wife and newborn baby, and the ways his faith is sustaining him as he looks toward a future as a single parent of three small children.
Three little redheaded superheroes climbed on their dad. They tussled over which one got to wear the Hulk Hands. When their turns came, they put on the oversized green gloves to punch and knock over a pile of cardboard boxes.
In their playroom Thursday, the children wore superhero capes made by their mother. There were laughs, toddler antics and sibling squabbles.
Amid a hubbub of toys and tots, Alex Clawson watched over his children with love, patience and the gentlest hint of authority. It was a sweet morning at their Everett home. But things are not what they were.
“My mom died,” 4-year-old Willem Clawson confided quietly, looking up at his visitors.
Amy Clawson and the couple’s newborn daughter, Elayda Tess Clawson, died May 21, the day after Amy’s 33rd birthday.
About a month before the baby was due, the family was out for a Sunday walk near their Pinehurst area home. Amy dropped to the ground, suffering heart failure. An elementary school teacher before motherhood, she died that day. Baby Elayda died, in her father’s arms, shortly after she was delivered.
Along with her husband, Amy leaves their two sons, Willem and 3-year-old Atley, and daughter Seirsha, 20 months old.
….
Women from a group at his church stopped by the Clawson house recently to help out. “They folded my laundry — I still haven’t managed to fold my own laundry,” he said, adding “I did the garbage, Amy did the laundry.”
Amy’s heart issues weren’t a surprise. Her husband said she was born with a heart murmur, which was repaired in infancy. She was a “strep carrier,” he said, meaning her body didn’t react normally to the bacteria. In her early 20s, a strep infection destroyed one of her heart valves.
To read the full article, click here.
