From Mother’s Pain Comes Aid to Others

The hole dug into the grassy hillside was small. The hole torn in hearts of those gathered around it was huge.

“Nobody expects a child to die,” whispered Heather Aitken. “Nobody is expecting to lose a baby.”

Aitken was standing outside the knot of family members and friends who had come to a Westlake Village cemetery recently to bury 7-day-old Daniel Tocyznski.

Daniel’s parents and the others were there to mourn. Aitken was there to help.

The 28-year-old Woodland Hills homemaker heads a fledgling nonprofit foundation that provides shoulders to lean on--and to cry on--for families whose babies have died.

Her group helps arrange funerals, offering low-cost burials for poor families. It helps find grief counseling for parents who often are so distraught that they can neither eat nor sleep.

Aitken knows that pain well. Her 6-month-old son, Chad, died two years ago after suffering a reaction to a routine diphtheria-tetanus vaccination.

She and her husband, house painter Doug Aitken, 42, managed to bury Chad when relatives in Texas sent money for the funeral. But they were unprepared for what happened next.

Feelings of anger, guilt and helplessness strained the couple’s relationship. Doug Aitken had to take time off work to watch their four other children when Heather suffered a nervous breakdown.

“I felt all my motherly experiences had gone out the window,” she recalled. “There were 20 other babies buried in the cemetery where Chad was, but I didn’t know how to find those moms or to find anybody to talk to who’d been through this.”

A year of therapy with a family and marriage counselor returned stability to Aitken’s life. And it set the stage for creation of Little Heroes/The Chad Aitken Foundation earlier this year.

In the past three months, public hospitals and coroners’ offices in Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties have referred more than 75 families who have lost children because of illnesses and accidents to Little Heroes.

The foundation has helped 50 families with funeral expenses and counseling.

“Her organization has been a blessing to our whole family,” said Rosalie Rangel, the aunt of a 3-month-old who died, apparently of sudden infant death syndrome, Aug. 21 in the San Bernardino County community of Grand Terrace.

“No one is really prepared for a child’s death. Heather knew what we were going through. She was the middle person between us, the mortuary, the cemetery, our church, the coroner. It was as if an angel came from out of the blue.”

Aitken has so far spent $4,700 in donations on funeral costs, negotiating with cemeteries and mortuaries to defray expenses for 35 families. Her 10-member volunteer board of advisors has begun applying for grants to expand the assistance.

“Right now I’m looking for a place that will give good deals on grave markers,” she said.

Little Heroes assists parents of children to age 5. According to state statistics, more than 1,400 children in that age range died in Los Angeles County in 1995.

Coroners’ officials say creation of Little Heroes has come as a relief to them. Until now, families unable to afford burials have had to let the county cremate their children’s remains.

“We don’t like to see cases cremated due to lack of funds,” said Joyce Kato, an investigator with the Los Angeles County coroner’s office. “But the only option in the past has been county cremation. Now there’s Little Heroes.”

The grief counseling is handled by professionals provided by places such as churches or paid for by insurance or victims’ aid groups.

Aitken does not counsel families, but she does share her experience with them.

“I urge them to make sure they get footprints and handprints or a lock of hair. I suggest they see the baby--that they tuck in the baby’s blanket and close the casket,” she said. “It’s very important for closure. It was for me.”

Roger Ebsen, a marriage and family counselor in Sherman Oaks and Westlake Village who works with Little Heroes, said Aitken’s group fills gaps left by other organized grief-counseling programs. Many hospitals and groups such as the SIDS Foundation offer such counseling, he said.

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Workshops to help Little Heroes volunteers comfort families are planned, he said. So far, seven mothers who have lost babies have volunteered to work with the foundation.

Donna Odend’hal, a Westlake Village resident who is one of Little Heroes’ volunteers, said she looked futilely for other mothers who had suffered similar losses when her 8-day-old son, Nicholas, died of pneumonia in early 1996.

Odend’hal brought a box of tissues to Daniel Tocyznski’s funeral.

They were in heavy demand as cantor Caren Glasser of Kol Tikuah Synagogue in Woodland Hills spoke over his tiny, white casket.

“Daniel touched our lives for only a few short days. But we will remember him in heaven,” she said to his parents, Jeff and Evelyn Tocyznski of Simi Valley. Their son died at UCLA Medical Center because of a herniated diaphragm, a congenital abdominal defect.

Heather Aitken lingered after the service ended and the mourners drifted away.

“It will take me a day or two to get over this,” she said. “I don’t go to all of the funerals. Otherwise, I wouldn’t make it.”

Her own son is watching, Aitken is convinced.

“These babies are in heaven, getting to know Chad,” she said. “He’s telling them that his mom is going to help their moms.”