This past week Jacksonville witnessed a tragedy of a local family. Twin children were found passed away inside their toy box. Their mother – although broken-hearted herself – posted this message online. We reached out to Sadie Myers and asked if it would be okay to post it. She said Yes. She wants to educate others on how to prevent this from happening ever again. At the end of her message, please find a link to a GoFundMe account to help with the parent’s expenses.

God bless the little children.

From Sadie Myers: Not many will know the pain of losing two children at the same time and losing them in a way that makes no sense, but I have to believe that something in this universe chose them specifically, maybe to protect them from some future tragedy, or maybe because their souls were too perfect for this world, I don’t know, but everything in me hopes that I will know someday, because not knowing hurts too bad to keep living.

What I do know is that I NEED to live for my two amazing big boys, and I WILL, I will make it my sole purpose to give them the most amazing lives, to not let this cause any life long damage to their mental state. We will be going to family therapy sessions to try and help that.

Me and Don have explained to them that death is a part of life and that they did an amazing job giving their baby brother and sister the best 4 years possible, and that we were so very LUCKY to get the gift of having the twins with us for even a short time, because they changed us all for the better and brought sooo much light and love into our lives, every second with those twins was full of laughter, silliness, dancing, silly questions and funny faces, games and jokes, happiness and LOVE!!!

We will cherish those memories and ALWAYS celebrate the twins and we will carry their memory with us in all we do.

The boys truly seem like they will continue to have happy lives, they are so much stronger than I knew and have helped to make me a stronger person. That being said, me and don are having an extremely hard time trying to make sense of this. Not many will ever know the feeling of trying to not spend EVERY WAKING SECOND crying in agony, so hard that it makes you fall over in pain, but we are trying soooo hard to not let our boys see us this way. They have been with family for the past week because we don’t want to emotionally scar them seeing us like this, and they need to be away from all the triggers that could cause them to be in our same state.

Please send all your love, prayers and good energy our way because we will need it to be able to get through. I will explain what happened to my babies, so if you would like to know then continue reading.

Last Friday night while I was at work, Don put the boys and the twins to bed, then soon after went to bed himself. When I got home from work a couple hours later I looked in at all the kids like usual to make sure they were sleeping, then ate my dinner and went to sleep. At some point early that morning the twins woke each other up and decided they wanted to play in their room

rather than sleep, they do this a lot, it’s just a twin thing I guess, and then they usually fall asleep in some weird place in their room with toys left everywhere so mom and dad can see proof of their late night playing when we get up in the morning.

Friday night the weird place they decided to snuggle up and go back to sleep was in their cedar toy chest that we use to store all their stuffed animals. They pulled out all but a couple stuffed animals, I guess they left some to keep it comfy in there, then they laid inside head to toe with one arm each over their twin and I’m assuming said “good night kell kell” and “night night sissy”.

Sometime during their sleep one of them must have moved or kicked during a dream and it caused the lid of this old wooden cedar chest to close. Something I did not know and I’m sure many others don’t know is that most wooden toy chests once closed are AIR TIGHT and also sound proof. So as they slept, all snuggled up together, they slowly ran out of oxygen within a couple of hours and passed away. They never even knew it was happening. There was no sudden gasp for air, it was a very slow transition from sleep to passing on.

When I woke up for work the next morning the boys had already woken up and were playing outside and assumed the twins were still sleeping. Don went to check for them and this is when we realized something was wrong, so we ALL immediately started panicking, yelling for them, turning the house upside down, yelling up and down the street, then Axton yelled “Mommy I found them! They are so silly just sleeping in the toy box”, so I ran in to check and within a few seconds I knew something wasn’t right, but I also quickly realized it was already too late.

It makes no sense to me and never will. I hope knowing this helps in some way, and I hope if you have a toy box like this that you destroy it immediately!!! Again, please keep me and my family in your hearts and prayers, because this will never get easier for us.

I love you all.

If you care to help the family – go to this GoFundMe Link.