Source: people.com --- Friday, September 29, 2017
A grieving Australian father honored his late son by running a marathon with an empty stroller. Troy Austin, 36, of Queensland, Australia, ran the 26-mile Sunshine Coast Marathon in August, pushing an empty stroller along the way to raise awareness about stillbirth after the death of his son T.G. “I got more of an empty feeling,” Austin tells PEOPLE of his emotions during the race. “I heard, ‘His baby is dead,’ a few times and that was pretty hard to take. I never wanted to back out. I never expected it to cause as many questions and discussions as it did.” T.G. was stillborn on Jan. 21, 2016 at 27 weeks, just days after Austin and his wife, Kelly, learned that their son had no heartbeat. “The day you find out your child has passed isn’t the day of labor, well not in our instance,” Austin says. “After a few emotionally painful days, you go to the hospital to give birth, knowing that your isn’t coming home to his room. His clothes are not needed, his cot an empty space.” Austin says he decided to run the marathon alongside his friend, for his charity T.G.’s Legacy . And while completing the marathon wasn’t a tough task for the triathlete, the emotional strain of the race was more difficult, Austin says. “There was a group of young ladies in tutus running in the half marathon … as they ran past us they joked about the empty stroller,” Austin recalls. “It wasn’t till my friend said my son was dead that they stopped the jesting … th ...
from Australia http://ift.tt/2xLwUg0
No comments:
Post a Comment