My name is Lori Plegge and I am a new author in the Little Rock, AR area. I recently published my book "When Tomorrow Starts Without Me" which is a story about my son's life. You see on March 16, 2013 I lost my oldest son, Anthony, he was 19 years old. The reason I wrote this book and would like to share it with you is because even though my son died in my arms it took me 3 years to accept the fact that he was no longer with me.  There are so many parents out there that have lost children and I wanted to let them know they are not alone. 

Here is the introduction to my book:

As I stood there listening to the slow beat of the heart monitor in the hospital, I knew my son’s life was coming to an end. I will never forget the smell of death in the room and I remember my mother saying to me 70 over 40……60 over 30…… 20 over…… flat line……flat line…… flat line and just like that, at 8:50 p.m. on March 16, 2007, my son’s life came to an end. Most parents would’ve been crying or going ballistic but I just stood there running my fingers through his thick black hair telling him everything would be alright. It was over the longest week of my life was finally over. 

My son was the third out of four of his friends to pass away at a young age ranging from seventeen to twenty-one. Anthony hung out with a group of five kids, if you saw one of them, you saw them all.  The group consisted of Carrie, Shocoby, Chris, Wyatt, and Anthony.  Little did we know Chris would be the first of Anthony’s friends to pass away, the second was JP, my Anthony was the third and the fourth was Anthony R. It was as if we parents watched our children die one by one.

Have you ever lost a child? If so how did you deal with it? Did you lock yourself in a room and hide from the rest of the world?  Did you feel like your world had come to a screeching halt? Did you throw yourself on the casket because you didn’t want your child to be left alone in the cold hard ground? Did you have other children you had to take care of? Did you continue to live each day as if nothing had ever happened because you refused to believe you lost your child?

Believe it or not, unfortunately there are many of us that have had to bury our own children for one reason or another.  I know several people who have lost a child and these are just some of the ways they chose to deal with their death. Sometimes you feel like you are the only parent on this earth that has ever lost a child but unfortunately you are not.   Each of us has lost someone who is dear to us, someone we gave birth to, someone in our lives we can never get back and it hurts, it hurts a lot. My name is Lori Crabtree Plegge and on March 16, 2007, I lost my oldest son Charles Anthony Crabtree.

This is the first book I have ever written so I apologize if it is a little rough. The reason for this book is to share my son’s story with the rest of the world.  This story is about the happy and sad times, the good and bad times, how he escaped death on several occasions, and the paths he chose leading up to his death. It is also about how I have coped with his death and some of the things I have done to help others. Will this story bring my son back? No, but it will help me to remember what his life was like and the experiences we shared together.  I hope this story touches you as much as his life touched me. Maybe by hearing someone else’s story it will help you realize there are other parents out there going through the exact same thing you are.  It will get better, you will get through this loss, and life truly does go on. 

Each of us has a different story to tell about our loved one and no two stories will be the same.  Each of us will deal with the death of our child differently but we still have to continue living our life to its fullest.  You may wonder how will I go on in life without my child but with the Lord’s help, each day will become more and more easy.  Will we ever forget the child that we have lost most definitely not?!!!

If you have lost a child, I want you to go away with this one thing, as bad as it may hurt, you must talk about your child.  This is the only way you are going to heal. If you refuse to talk about your child and keep those emotions bottled up inside, it can and probably will lead to depression. Therefore, you have got to let those feelings out. The normal things you may experience after losing a child are sadness, anger, and hatred.  You may think why my child and not me, why my child Lord, and if God loved me he would not have allowed this to happen to me. Then as time goes by you will start to experience happiness, you will begin to remember all the good times you had together.  As I said before, all of these emotions are normal and more than likely you will go through each and every one of them. This is good because if you have or are experiencing any of them, you are healing. 

Writing this book is helping me continue to heal, you see, the first three years after my son’s death I refused to believe he was dead. My fiancé Cliff was very concerned because after three years I still hadn’t accepted the fact my son had passed away.  He knew this wasn’t healthy and made the decision to help me start the healing process. 

One day I was at Cliff’s house talking about Anthony as if he were still alive. Cliff walked over to me, made me look at him and said “Lori, Anthony is dead. Your son is dead.”  I started shaking my head and telling him, “No he is not!”  He then told me, “Yes he is.  Anthony is dead.”  I still shook my head no.  Then Cliff turned my face toward his, made me look him in the eye, and repeat to him over and over again, “Anthony is dead. My son is dead.  Anthony is dead. My son is dead” until I started crying. Because I started crying he knew I was beginning to accept the fact my son was no longer with me. That was very hard for me because it meant I had really lost my son and he was never coming back.

Eight months after Anthony’s death I started writing down everything I could remember about his death and over the years I shared my story with others. Surprisingly to me, each one of them told me I needed to write a book about his death and publish it.  For the longest time I just blew off what they were telling me but then I started thinking, if my son’s story could help just one parent deal with the tragedy of losing a child or stop just one child from going down the wrong path as my son did, then my story has served its purpose.

If you have lost a child, I want to say I am so sorry for the loss of your child, just remember your child is watching over you in everything you do.  Remember the good times you had together and most of all, know once you leave this life your child will be there waiting to take your hand and lead you into eternity. 

You may have people who have never lost a child tell you they know exactly how you feel but they have no idea how you feel. Understand they are just trying to help you during your time of loss. This is an awkward situation for them and they have no idea what to say so they are saying what they think is right.  Please don’t get mad at them because they are just trying to comfort you during your time of loss. However, there are people in this world that do actually know how you feel and I have started a support group for us.  The group is on Facebook and is called “Support Group for People Who Have Lost a Child”.  You will have to ask to join this group because it is a private group.  The reason I made it private is because this is a very personal thing and people want to share their stories but not with people that have never experienced the loss of a child.  Hopefully this site will allow people to relate to someone else’s story and help them deal with their own loss.

Please remember if you have other children to take care of you cannot close yourself away from the rest of the world.  You must be there for your other children they still need and love you. Not only that, but they need you to help them learn to deal with the loss of their sibling and be a shoulder for them to cry on. Also if you have a spouse you need to lean on each other during this time because you will need each other to get through this loss. 

It has been six years since my son’s death.  I’ve done the best I can to remember the good along with the bad times in his life. I did this so I won’t forget that time in my life.  I forget things very easily and I want to be able to look back years from now and remember the last week I spent with my son.  It may not be a good memory but it is my memory and I don’t ever want to forget him. 

Please understand if you have lost a child you are not alone in this great big world. As I mentioned before, each of us has a story to tell and this is my story.  God Bless each and every one of us.

no longer with me. There are so many parents out there that have lost children and I wanted to let them know they are not alone. Here is the introduction to my book:  no longer with me. There are so many parents out there that have lost children and I wanted to let them know they are not alone. Here is the introduction to my book:

As I stood there listening to the slow beat of the heart monitor in the hospital, I knew my son’s life was coming to an end. I will never forget the smell of death in the room and I remember my mother saying to me 70 over 40……60 over 30…… 20 over…… flat line……flat line…… flat line and just like that, at 8:50 p.m. on March 16, 2007, my son’s life came to an end. Most parents would’ve been crying or going ballistic but I just stood there running my fingers through his thick black hair telling him everything would be alright. It was over the longest week of my life was finally over.

My son was the third out of four of his friends to pass away at a young age ranging from seventeen to twenty-one. Anthony hung out with a group of five kids, if you saw one of them, you saw them all. The group consisted of Carrie, Shocoby, Chris, Wyatt, and Anthony. Little did we know Chris would be the first of Anthony’s friends to pass away, the second was JP, my Anthony was the third and the fourth was Anthony R. It was as if we parents watched our children die one by one.

Have you ever lost a child? If so how did you deal with it? Did you lock yourself in a room and hide from the rest of the world? Did you feel like your world had come to a screeching halt? Did you throw yourself on the casket because you didn’t want your child to be left alone in the cold hard ground? Did you have other children you had to take care of? Did you continue to live each day as if nothing had ever happened because you refused to believe you lost your child?

Believe it or not, unfortunately there are many of us that have had to bury our own children for one reason or another. I know several people who have lost a child and these are just some of the ways they chose to deal with their death. Sometimes you feel like you are the only parent on this earth that has ever lost a child but unfortunately you are not. Each of us has lost someone who is dear to us, someone we gave birth to, someone in our lives we can never get back and it hurts, it hurts a lot. My name is Lori Crabtree Plegge and on March 16, 2007, I lost my oldest son Charles Anthony Crabtree.

This is the first book I have ever written so I apologize if it is a little rough. The reason for this book is to share my son’s story with the rest of the world. This story is about the happy and sad times, the good and bad times, how he escaped death on several occasions, and the paths he chose leading up to his death. It is also about how I have coped with his death and some of the things I have done to help others. Will this story bring my son back? No, but it will help me to remember what his life was like and the experiences we shared together. I hope this story touches you as much as his life touched me. Maybe by hearing someone else’s story it will help you realize there are other parents out there going through the exact same thing you are. It will get better, you will get through this loss, and life truly does go on.

Each of us has a different story to tell about our loved one and no two stories will be the same. Each of us will deal with the death of our child differently but we still have to continue living our life to its fullest. You may wonder how will I go on in life without my child but with the Lord’s help, each day will become more and more easy. Will we ever forget the child that we have lost most definitely not?!!!

If you have lost a child, I want you to go away with this one thing, as bad as it may hurt, you must talk about your child. This is the only way you are going to heal. If you refuse to talk about your child and keep those emotions bottled up inside, it can and probably will lead to depression. Therefore, you have got to let those feelings out. The normal things you may experience after losing a child are sadness, anger, and hatred. You may think why my child and not me, why my child Lord, and if God loved me he would not have allowed this to happen to me. Then as time goes by you will start to experience happiness, you will begin to remember all the good times you had together. As I said before, all of these emotions are normal and more than likely you will go through each and every one of them. This is good because if you have or are experiencing any of them, you are healing.
Writing this book is helping me continue to heal, you see, the first three years after my son’s death I refused to believe he was dead. My fiancé Cliff was very concerned because after three years I still hadn’t accepted the fact my son had passed away. He knew this wasn’t healthy and made the decision to help me start the healing process.

One day I was at Cliff’s house talking about Anthony as if he were still alive. Cliff walked over to me, made me look at him and said “Lori, Anthony is dead. Your son is dead.” I started shaking my head and telling him, “No he is not!” He then told me, “Yes he is. Anthony is dead.” I still shook my head no. Then Cliff turned my face toward his, made me look him in the eye, and repeat to him over and over again, “Anthony is dead. My son is dead. Anthony is dead. My son is dead” until I started crying. Because I started crying he knew I was beginning to accept the fact my son was no longer with me. That was very hard for me because it meant I had really lost my son and he was never coming back.

Eight months after Anthony’s death I started writing down everything I could remember about his death and over the years I shared my story with others. Surprisingly to me, each one of them told me I needed to write a book about his death and publish it. For the longest time I just blew off what they were telling me but then I started thinking, if my son’s story could help just one parent deal with the tragedy of losing a child or stop just one child from going down the wrong path as my son did, then my story has served its purpose.

If you have lost a child, I want to say I am so sorry for the loss of your child, just remember your child is watching over you in everything you do. Remember the good times you had together and most of all, know once you leave this life your child will be there waiting to take your hand and lead you into eternity.
You may have people who have never lost a child tell you they know exactly how you feel but they have no idea how you feel. Understand they are just trying to help you during your time of loss. This is an awkward situation for them and they have no idea what to say so they are saying what they think is right. Please don’t get mad at them because they are just trying to comfort you during your time of loss. However, there are people in this world that do actually know how you feel and I have started a support group for us. The group is on Facebook and is called “Support Group for People Who Have Lost a Child”. The link is: https://www.facebook.com/groups/449254731817639/. You will have to ask to join this group because it is a private group. The reason I made it private is because this is a very personal thing and people want to share their stories but not with people that have never experienced the loss of a child. Hopefully this site will allow people to relate to someone else’s story and help them deal with their own loss.

Please remember if you have other children to take care of you cannot close yourself away from the rest of the world. You must be there for your other children they still need and love you. Not only that, but they need you to help them learn to deal with the loss of their sibling and be a shoulder for them to cry on. Also if you have a spouse you need to lean on each other during this time because you will need each other to get through this loss.
It has been six years since my son’s death. I’ve done the best I can to remember the good along with the bad times in his life. I did this so I won’t forget that time in my life. I forget things very easily and I want to be able to look back years from now and remember the last week I spent with my son. It may not be a good memory but it is my memory and I don’t ever want to forget him.

Please understand if you have lost a child you are not alone in this great big world. As I mentioned before, each of us has a story to tell and this is my story. God Bless each and every one of us.

The following are ratings and reviews the book has received on Amazon.com:

5.0 out of 5 stars When Tomorrow Starts Without Me., December 13, 2013
By Jackie Winn
This review is from: When Tomorrow Starts Without Me: The Loss of a Child (Kindle Edition)
Just finished reading this book. Could not stop reading it. When the author (Lori) wrote this book I can certainly relate to the anguish she went through and has "survived" the most horrible thing that can happen to a parent. So glad she had a large family that was so supportive and many friends to help her through it. Her son passed on March 16, and mine on march 17. If is well written ad a nightmare she went through. Well worth the read if you have lost your child, no matter what age.

5.0 out of 5 stars A book that touched my heart very much!, December 9, 2013
By Dolores Mingo
This review is from: When Tomorrow Starts Without Me: The Loss of a Child (Kindle Edition)
Lori, I just finished reading your book and I could not take a break from it. The night I ordered it, I stayed up until 1:00 p.m. reading and finished it when I got up the next morning. Thank you so very much for sharing your story and Anthony's. You did a great job and I can imagine all the emotions you went through in writing his story. This book so touched my heart, and was written with such honesty and openness. I wish you well on your book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing and candid story, December 13, 2013
By N. J. Halk "keeper of the secrets" (AR)
Amazon Verified Purchase
This review is from: When Tomorrow Starts Without Me: The Loss of a Child (Kindle Edition)
This is an unflinching look at the good, the bad, the unthinkable. It is every parents' worst nightmare. An amazing tribute, heart wrenching at times, mixed with funny stories about an amazing young man taken too soon from this life. Lori doesn't sugar coat or omit, she has boldly written a story detailing both the life and death of her son. This isn't just a book to help parents to cope with the death of a child, it is for every parent of a child. I went through the entire spectrum of emotions reading this: from joy, to anger, to sadness. It has been a long time since a book provoked such a range. I highly recommend this book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommend this book to anyone and especially anyone who has ever lost a child!, December 29, 2013
By John W. Weeks "JW Weeks"
(REAL NAME) This review is from: When Tomorrow Starts Without Me: The Loss of a Child (Kindle Edition)
Reading this book took me along on Lori's heartwarming, bittersweet, yet inspiring journey of being a young mother to the end of her son, Anthony's life. I laughed and cried with her as she tells about her son's life as a precocious child and through his teen years and untimely death. Tremendously good book that keeps the reader running the gambit of emotions. Inspirational!

5.0 out of 5 stars Good read, December 29, 2013
By Janet Henderson
Amazon Verified Purchase
This review is from: When Tomorrow Starts Without Me: The Loss of a Child (Kindle Edition)
I could not put the book down. I felt every emotion with the writer and I am so sorry for your loss.

I hope you will consider my book for your book club.