LDS Podcast "Latter-Day Lights" - Inspirational LDS Stories

On Grieving and Healing After Child Loss: Lawrence's & Melissa Stone's Story - Latter-Day Lights

• Scott Brandley and Alisha Coakley

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When tragedy strikes not once but twice, how do you keep your faith — and your loved ones — from falling apart?

In this deeply moving episode of Latter-Day Lights, Lawrence and Melissa Stone open up about the unimaginable loss of their children due to a driving accident and miscarriage. But from the heartbreak, take us through a journey of rebuilding faith, marriage, and hope through grief. From heartache to healing and Heaven's quiet reassurances, their story reveals how Christ’s light can transform sorrow into strength and love into lasting purpose.

Their message is a tender reminder that we all grieve differently — and that all paths to healing are valid. Lawrence & Melissa share how they were able to slowly overcome the pain through writing, service, and a shared commitment to their covenants. Along the road, they also share their best practices for supporting loved ones who are grieving.

The Stones' story teaches us how faith after loss can lead not only to peace, but to a deeper understanding of eternal families and God’s love that never fades. Join Lawrence and Melissa to discover how someone's darkest days became a testimony of light, love, and eternal hope.

*** Please SHARE Lawrence & Melissa's story and help us spread hope and light to others. ***

To WATCH this episode on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/3gfZCR9D-j8

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To READ Lawrence & Melissa's book, "Our Story[s]," visit: https://a.co/d/eImk7r8

To LEARN MORE about The Tears Foundation, visit: https://thetearsfoundation.org/

To READ Scott’s new book “Faith to Stay” for free, visit: https://www.faithtostay.com/

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Also, if you have a faith-promoting or inspiring story, or know someone who does, please let us know by going to https://www.latterdaylights.com and reaching out to us.

Scott Brandley:

Hey there, as a Latter Day Lights listener, I want to give you a very special gift today. My brand new book, Faith to Stay. This book is filled with inspiring stories, powerful discoveries, and even fresh insights to help strengthen your faith during the storms of life. So if you're looking to be inspired, uplifted, and spiritually recharged, just visit faithtoy.com. Now, let's get back to the show. Hey everyone, I'm Scott Brandley.

Alisha Coakley:

And I'm Alisha Coakley. Every member of the church has a story to share, one that can instill faith, invite growth, and inspire others.

Scott Brandley:

On today's episode, we're going to hear how one couple struggle with child loss is helping them to strengthen their marriage while inspiring others to share their own stories. Welcome to Latter Day Lights. Lawrence and Melissa, welcome to the show. Thank you. We're happy to be here.

Alisha Coakley:

Yeah, thanks so much for reaching out. I know uh um definitely your story is is one that is a lot heavier. Um, and I'm hoping that uh as you share today, that we'll be able to be sensitive to all of the things that you guys are going through and have gone through. Um but before we get into all of that, um, will you tell us a little bit about yourselves?

Lawrence Stone:

Yeah, so uh Lawrence, I grew up here in eastern Idaho. We we currently live in Rigby. I grew up in the St. Anthony area. And Melissa and I we met, we'll go to school at BYU, Idaho. We were both studying music there. Uh today I currently work as a life coach for business professionals, essentially, and I do business trainings for companies, communication trainings, and helping improve the work environment, things of that nature.

Melissa Stone:

And I am a homeschooling mom to our four living children, uh, as well as a nail technician.

Alisha Coakley:

Oh, nice. I have to ask, can I see him? Are you one of the nail technicians that does everything for everyone else and doesn't give herself enough time to do her own? Oh, it's so pretty. Okay, I love it.

Melissa Stone:

We have an event thing too. We had an event we went to last week, and so they got done last week.

Alisha Coakley:

There you go.

Scott Brandley:

I would show you guys mine, but I don't want to make you feel bad.

Alisha Coakley:

So that's probably a good idea. We're already pretty jealous of everything else. Fair enough. Oh wow. Well, awesome. So now did you guys meet when BYU Idaho was BYU Idaho or when it was Rick's College?

Lawrence Stone:

Yeah, we met in 2007. Well, we got married in 2008.

Alisha Coakley:

Yeah, seven. We met in 2008.

Lawrence Stone:

We actually met at Walmart because you can find anything at Walmart.

Alisha Coakley:

And so even a wife.

Lawrence Stone:

Even a wife, exactly.

Alisha Coakley:

Yep. Well, guys, uh, we're gonna go ahead and give you the floor. Why don't you tell us where your story starts?

Lawrence Stone:

Yeah, so February 6, 2012, it's kind of the beginning of the struggle that we're sharing with people. Uh I just started a new project at work. We'd been having some financial struggles. We graduated in a down economy, and our finances were finally starting to catch up. And this project was extra nice too because I was going to work a little bit later in the day. I always had to leave before my kids woke up. And that was a little disappointing to me. And this day, we had our two kids, Ethne was two, uh, Edward was eight months. Yeah. And they actually got to get up before we left, we got to do family prayer, even a little bit of a snuggle session before I went to work. And then uh it was a great first day for the new project I was on. And then Melissa was working part-time at a charter school teaching music, and we both got off about the same time, and Melissa went to pick up the kids from my in-law's house. Her mother was watching them. And on the way home, she was T-boned by a cement truck. And Melissa and our daughter, Ethne, were taken by Lifight helicopter to the hospital. We were living in Utah at the time, so Melissa went to the University of Utah, and our daughter went to primary children's. And basically right after she arrived, Ethney passed away. And our son Edward, he was taken by ambulance, checked out of the hospital the next day with a few stitches in his head. Almost like nothing happened to him. Just happy little guy. And that's kind of where our story really begins. Is dealing with the the tragedy of that child lost of losing our daughter Ethne. And then on top of that, Melissa had a lot of physical recovery that she was dealing with too.

Melissa Stone:

Um, I was in a coma for a couple days, and when I woke up, I was intubated, and uh I couldn't remember what had happened, and all I knew was that I couldn't move my head because I had a collar on, I was intubated, and I knew something wasn't right. And when I woke up, the first thing that I asked was I wanted to know were our kids okay. And um, and Lawrence kept telling me that Edward, our baby, he was fine, he was happy, he'd even tell me who he was with at the time, um, and that Ethne was safe. And he didn't want to tell me what had happened until they would act until they extivated me because he wanted me to be able to talk and express myself and ask questions um in regards to what had happened and be able to get them answered. Um and so it took it took a little while, but it when he told me she was safe, I knew. I knew in my heart that that she was gone. And it it really crushed me because I was the one driving the car.

Lawrence Stone:

It was luckily we had some good nurses that were good advocates for us and they helped out a lot in the process because the doctors kept wanting to wait in case she needed to go back to surgery. But the longer she was coming out of the coma, the less we assumed that she was gonna need more surgery, and the less they thought she was gonna need more surgery. And finally the nurses just stood up for us and said, No, we need to excavate her so that way she can move on and and they can have this conversation. And so we're grateful for that supportive staff there. But dealing with our grief was a very interesting process. And it was I I remembered previously when I was in high school, I had a a guy who was in my ward actually, he was a year younger than me, we were teammates playing football together, and he died in a car accident. And I remember a couple years later, my mom telling me that everyone was watching what would happen with his parents after he died, because when you lose a child, it can either make or break your marriage. And I remember reflecting on that that first night after the accident and making that determination that this is not going to break my marriage. And it was interesting because before Ethne died, all I was focused on was praying that Ethne would pull through. And as soon as she died, my mindset shifted to, okay, ethne's gone. Now I need Melissa to pull through. And all my efforts were on we need to help Melissa with her recovery, we need to help Melissa with the mental strain that this is gonna put on her, all the struggle that she's gonna have to deal with. And one of my big priorities was making sure that she understood that I didn't blame her and that the people around her didn't blame her for this accident because I knew that she was going to be dealing with a lot of that guilt. And I found myself, for me, what helped me cope a lot with that was journaling. And that journaling helped me discover quite a bit about myself. And I learned a lot about life after death, about the spirit world, about uh our eternal families. I tell people in the few months that follow that, I learned more about who I was as a husband, a father, and a member of my community than I had in my entire life combined as I was journaling and reflecting and meditating and praying. But uh like I said, a lot of that focus also came to, and I'm not someone who focuses on who's good at focusing, but all of a sudden I was like laser focused on I gotta help Melissa out.

Melissa Stone:

Um for me, the the physical recovery had to come first. I had to recover physically before I could even consider the emotional and the spiritual recovery. And I spent a year in physical therapy. I was in the hospital for a little over a week or for for right now a week, and then we went and stayed with my parents for another week before we went back to our own apartment. And uh, and then I spent a year doing physical therapy because I had a laundry list of injuries. Essentially, the whole left side of my body was kind of crushed. And uh once I kind of came to the end of that year and I was more or less physically recovered, I started feeling all the things and I started um looking towards my spiritual recovery. Um now we did about six, I had so many people tell me, you need to do counseling, you need to go to counseling. And so I did about six or so months after the accident had happened.

Lawrence Stone:

Was it? Yeah, it was more like two or three months.

Melissa Stone:

Um, I started trying to see a counselor, and it was an LDS family services counselor. Um, we got a referral from our bishop, and it just wasn't a good fit. And if I had known then what I know now about finding a counselor for traumatic events, I would have done things completely differently. I tried some other counseling, but I just never had a really good fit. Um, the one counseling that we did that worked pretty well that that kind of stuck, the University of Utah puts on um grief support groups for people experiencing a myriad of different things in their lives, including child loss. And we attended a group there, and the man who was the moderator for the group was he had experienced the passing of his teenage son. And so having someone who had a similar experience to ours, it wasn't the same, but it was similar, um, helped a lot because he could relate more and he knew more of the right things to say and more of the ways that would help us. Um and we were in a group with three other women who had all lost children. Um, two of them had lost older sons, and one had lost a daughter on the exact same day as us in a car accident. Not the same kind of car accident, but a car accident nonetheless. And they all hoped through the the whole six weeks of this group that their husbands would come with them. Every single one of them expressed at some point, yeah, I think my husband's gonna come. I really want my husband to come. And none of their husbands came. But Lawrence was there with me every single week, supportive and learning and healing and doing those things alongside me. And that made such a difference for me that he was there even though he didn't want to be.

Lawrence Stone:

Yeah. I mean, it was very clear why those husbands didn't come. I mean, especially as men, we don't want to be emotional, and especially in front of other people. And it was, you know, if it wasn't for the fact that I was dedicated to helping Melissa through her recovery and I knew she needed it and I knew she wouldn't go unless I went, I probably wouldn't have gone. But after the first couple of weeks of seeing these women talk about how much they wished their husbands would come too, it became very evident and very clear to me why I needed to keep coming with her to these things, to these, to those sessions. And honestly, as much as I didn't want to cry in front of other people, it was a very safe environment. I never felt belittled, I never felt like I wasn't safe. And it was it was a really good therapeutic experience, even for me, even though it wasn't what I wanted to do. But we noticed as we were going through our grief that we were grieving very differently. I definitely wasn't crying as much as Melissa, and she would get frustrated, wondering, Am I really grieving? Is you know, is Lawrence really grieving because he's not crying? And we had to learn that we needed to grieve differently. We needed support in different ways. And part of that might be because it's a man and a woman, part of it might be because Melissa was in the car and I wasn't. Part of my might be different personality styles, but whatever it was, we needed to grieve differently and we needed support in different ways, but we both needed that. And I I remember early on, right after the accident, this idea of the this prompting came to me that said, pay attention to what's happening because you're gonna need to tell others about it. You need you're gonna write a book about it at some point. And so that was another reason why journaling became so important. But it was especially important that because we were grieving in different ways, because Melissa wasn't journaling and that wasn't helping her. She struggled with that because of the brain injury she sustained during the accident. But we still needed to keep that line of communication very open, and that would help us out going forward. And I mean, right after the accident, Melissa told me that we're done having kids, that she was terrified of the thought of having to lose another child and having to go through that again. And for me, I knew that she always wanted to be a mom. We talked about having a good-sized family, and I knew at some point she would come back and decide that she wanted to have kids. And I could tell when she told me this, she was ready to put up a fight about not having kids. And I knew that that wasn't a good idea. So I said, okay, at some point you're probably gonna change your mind. And when you're ready, when you're ready to talk, I'll be ready to talk as well. And eventually she came back and decided that she was ready to talk. And we basically expressed our thoughts on why she didn't want to have any more children, why I didn't want to have more children. And at the end, I basically just left it to her and said, I think you're gonna change your mind at some point. And whenever you change your mind, I'm gonna be ready for you.

Melissa Stone:

And I changed my mind a little sooner than even I expected to. Um, and a little over a year after that accident, we uh decided to have another baby. And so I got pregnant a little over a year after the accident with our third. Um, and we had a little boy, and he was born in December of 2013, and then complications arose, and he was born with a birth defect that was a life-threatening birth defect. He had to have multiple surgeries to correct that, and so here we are going through this. And I remember at the time so many people were saying to us, haven't you guys seen enough? Haven't has isn't the Lord done with you? Um, and our our response was, guess not. Um, and so we went through all of this with our son, and through that whole experience, he was in the NICU for a couple weeks, and then he had another surgery uh at of at about five months old. Um, I felt a little bit because after losing ethne, I felt like Lawrence carried me a lot. And here we are, just shy of two years later, we have this new baby. He's got a life-threatening issue, and he's having to have multiple surgeries, he's in the NICU. I've just given birth. All those hormones are all over the place. But to a certain extent, I felt like I carried Lawrence a little bit through that experience. Um just because I was like, I gotta do what I gotta do, and I gotta do what I have to do to get my baby home. And um and so I learned a lot about dealing with his specific issues. It was a bowel issue, and I just that year was was a little bit of a wild ride.

Lawrence Stone:

He was born with something called Hirschsprung's disease. And essentially what it is is the nerve endings in the colon don't grow in all the way. And so when the bowel gets there, it can't detect it and it can't push it through. And so basically couldn't produce a bowel movement, and they had to remove a section of his colon uh in order to get him to function. And so for the first basically six months of his life, he had a colostomy bag. And wow, and hopefully, hopefully not quite a lifetime of bowel management issues, but certainly for a number of years, they're they're almost non-existent now. But especially for the first eight, nine years of his life, there was bowel management issues, which kind of helped solidify the fact that we were homeschooling. We were doing that even before we made that decision. I think while Mules was pregnant with him, or maybe a little bit after. But it was, you know, a lot of not fun stuff to have to deal with in that situation.

Melissa Stone:

Yeah. Um, and then a couple years later, uh, we had another baby. We had a little girl, which I was so excited to have another little girl again, and she's just the girliest girl. Everything was smooth sailing with her. And then when she was about 13, 14 months old, we found out I was expecting again. And while this one hadn't really been planned per se, we were still very, very excited to be adding to our family again. This was going to be baby number five, and we kind of figured that this would be it for our family. Um, five was kind of where we had said we we'd wanted to stop. And when I was about 13, 14 weeks along with this baby, I had a dream that really disturbed me. I had a dream that I'd gone in for, you know, that big ultrasound where you get your gender reveal and they look at all the anatomy of the baby. And it's a really exciting ultrasound. And I had a dream that we'd gone in for it and they couldn't find the heartbeat of the baby. And, you know, anyone who's been pregnant knows, generally speaking, the more pregnancies you have, the earlier you can feel the baby move. And I had felt him move. And at about 18 weeks, just before I was supposed to have that big ultrasound, I just kept getting this super uneasy feeling and I couldn't get that dream out of my head. And so I called my doctor's office and I said, Listen, I'm really worried. I think something's wrong. Can I please come in? And they really tried to dissuade me from coming in, but finally they were like, Okay, you can come in. So I went in and I saw a doctor that wasn't my regular doctor, and he was not my favorite person in the world because he wasn't very kind. And he was very dismissive of my feelings, of the fact that I told him I felt the baby move, but I haven't felt him move in a few days. And so he finally was like, Okay, well, we'll check things out. So he listened for the heartbeat, couldn't find it, tried a pocket ultrasound. I'd never seen one of these before, but um, and couldn't see a heartbeat through that. So they gave me a full ultrasound, and that's when it really confirmed that I had lost this baby. So I was around 18 weeks pregnant with him, and I I was done. I was shattered, I was crushed, and it was it was really, really difficult.

Lawrence Stone:

It it it really came down hard, obviously, and and a lot of the progress that Melissa had made, it was five years essentially, five and a half years after we'd lost Ethne when this happened, and it had just kind of all fallen apart. With Ethne, she struggled with saying prayers again. And then when we lost Thomas, that came back almost worse than it was before. She struggled with going to church, struggled saying prayers. And there was again my job not wanting to lose her, not wanting her to fall into this depression, not wanting her to just drop out of everything, trying to help her along. And it was a couple weeks before I could even get her to say prayer with me again. And even for the first few weeks after that, I was the only one who was allowed to say prayer. She refused. And I still remember the first time after Thomas died when she said that she was willing to say prayer was like a huge relief. But it was months after after we lost Thomas. And we were fortunate when we lost him that he actually so so we lost him, and Melissa had to go in and deliver him because her body didn't reject him, and so we actually she had to be induced. And he's he's on the records as a stillmorn because of that. And we were able to take his his little body and bury him with Ethne. He's actually buried on top of Ethney. And so when we when we go to the cemetery, we're able to visit both of them right there together.

Melissa Stone:

Um so after losing Thomas, I looked at Lawrence, I said, I'm done. No chance of ever having another one. We're good with the three we've got. Um I'm not I'm not open to this at all. And he was more or less okay. Yeah. If that's what you want.

Lawrence Stone:

In our in our minds, we we we had decided that after Thomas we were done, and so I was willing to accept that. But I also, again, knew my wife and knew that she might change her mind. And I said, if the moment does come when you want to re-rethink this, you want to talk about it, I'm open. But if we never talk about it again, if we never have any more kids, I'm comfortable with that.

Melissa Stone:

Um but you know, over time, the Lord works in mysterious ways and he softens your heart. And uh a few years later, I kind of started thinking that maybe there was one more for our family that we needed to consider having another baby. And so um in 2019.

Lawrence Stone:

Well, to yeah, 2018. We uh yeah, in 2018, we were coming up to Idaho to visit family. And I I struggled with coming back to Idaho regularly because it seemed like every time I came back to Idaho, it was for somebody's funeral. Those are the only things getting us to come back to Idaho. And it was sad for me. I remember going to a cousin's funeral, to a friend's funeral, and then our friend's parents' funeral, and then all within about two months, I think six weeks every other week, I lost a cousin, then a friend's parent, and then I had another friend who passed away, and I ended up not coming to his funeral because I was just so drained on coming back to Idaho for funerals. It was so depressing. And we had we decided to have a family reunion with my parents and all my siblings and and their kids in in July. And so I was excited to finally be coming back to Idaho, spending a week in Idaho and not coming up for a funeral. And then a week before we came up, my uncle died, and we still had to come up for a funeral. Well, when we were up here, we uh the community I grew up in does a big Pioneer Day celebration. And so that's why part of why we came up was for that celebration. Wow. And had a buddy, one of my best friends, had just moved back from California to Idaho, and he's having a cookout, and so we stopped by to say hi for a few minutes. And I was fine with the fact that we're living in Utah, accepted that that's where we were going to be living forever. And all of a sudden, I just found myself getting jealous, maybe, that he was back in Idaho, and I'd started feeling this pull to come back to Idaho. And my dad had left his job in the tech industry to pursue a passion in car restoration, and he had a little used car lot on the side, and and I decided, you know, I want to come and help him out because he's struggling. And so I pitched it to Melissa. I said, I want you to consider the possibility of us moving back, moving to Idaho, moving back to Idaho.

Melissa Stone:

And I laughed at him and told him Pat Chance.

Lawrence Stone:

Yeah. I mean, her family's down there, but what she actually said is, you know, I've been thinking we need a change in our life, and maybe this is it. And so we'd actually planned, my dad was working on a project that he needed help with, and so we planned on coming back a month later so I could help my dad with this project. And I said, when we come back, we're gonna think about do we want to live in Idaho? Maybe uh reach out to a realtor friend and take a look at a couple houses and consider that possibility. And then two weeks later, I had a cousin who committed suicide, and we were back in Idaho for another funeral. And I told him, Lys, I was like, we're just going up and back for the funeral. We're not there to think about moving back to Idaho. Uh, we're still gonna be coming back in a couple more weeks to help my dad with this project, and we'll we'll discuss it then.

Melissa Stone:

And when we were on the way home, kind of as we crossed the Utah-Idaho border, I just had this overwhelming feeling that we weren't headed home, that Idaho was home, and that we were meant to move back to Idaho. So we did. Um, and we moved back to Idaho in February of 2019.

Lawrence Stone:

And then in the lead up, we Melissa had come back and said that she was thinking about having another child. And I said, okay. And she didn't say she was ready quite at that point, but I told her that I was gonna set a deadline for her to make that decision. By the time I turned 36 is when she needed to be pregnant, if she really wanted to have that child. And that wasn't, I think we still had a couple years. I can't remember how much time we had left. There was still plenty of time for at least a year to think about it. But that gave her time to process it and figure it out. And so in the meantime, we prepped our house, we sold it, and we moved back to Idaho.

Melissa Stone:

And so uh end of 2019, I got pregnant with our definite last baby. He is it. And in May of 2020, in all of the chaos that was COVID, uh, we had our last baby up here in Idaho. And he is such a light and a joy in our lives. And honestly, I don't know that we would have had him if we'd moved, if we hadn't moved to Idaho just because of some other things that were going on in my family in Utah and just the way that I am, I would have got swallowed up in some of those other things and probably wouldn't, we probably wouldn't have our last baby. And so uh if not for anything but the fact that we had our last baby because after we moved to Idaho, I'm grateful that we made this move.

Lawrence Stone:

Um so living in Idaho, continuing to move forward. And I helped my dad out with his business, helped him grow his business, essentially 10x his revenues up to uh after a few years. And I enjoyed working on cars, but I realized it wasn't something I wanted to do every day. More of kind of a hobby thing. And I realized really what I want to do is I'd help my dad with his business, I'd helped other businesses when we were down in Utah, and I said I wanted to do that more. And so that's when I opened my coaching business. But really, part of that was is I just wanted to help people out. And I mentioned right after Ethne died, I had this thought of pay attention to what's happening because you're gonna need to share it with people. You need to write a book about it. And Melissa and I have been talking about writing this book for 10 years, off and on. And then finally, about three and a half or so years ago, we stopped making excuses and we decided I stopped.

Melissa Stone:

I didn't.

Lawrence Stone:

She was still making excuses, but eventually we worked her through those excuses as well. And we started writing uh our book called Our Stories. And the if if you look at the title, you know the story is spelled just regular story, but then there's a parenthetical S because what we realized when we were dealing with our grief and going through these losses is we were both grieving very differently, even though we were dealing with the same losses, even though we were going on the same timeline, if you will. And we realized as we interacted with other people who were dealing with loss that they're all grieving in their own ways. They all need support in their own ways. And so we have, if you as you read through the book, you'll hear parts of the story from my voice, and then other parts of the story from Melissa's voice on how we needed help from each other, how we were able to support each other, and what were the things we were going through. And it was interesting because people gifted us a lot of books after we lost our children. And almost all of those books were written from a female perspective. And I really struggled with connecting with any of them because I felt like they weren't really calling out to me, they weren't experiencing the same things as me. And that was one of the reasons why we thought this was so important is to be able to share the both perspectives and how both perspectives need to work together. Because just looking at one perspective, the other, the other perspective isn't going to quite understand that. And in the intro of the book, we talk about um being a help meet for each other. And as I was doing some research, I can't remember the exact words, but the original Hebrew words help meet, basically what they mean is their opposites working together. And that men and women view things and see things and interact with things differently. But they need to do that in order to help each other see other perspectives, in order to help each other learn more and progress more and do more. And the Heavenly Father made us that way so that we can have those other perspectives, so we can have those other opportunities that as just a man I wouldn't be able to see, or as just a woman, Melissa wouldn't be able to see. And that was what we wanted to do is we. We want to help comfort those who need comfort and mourn with those who are mourning by sharing our stories and letting them know it's okay if you're grieving a little bit differently than your spouse or than someone else who thinks you should be grieving. Especially when you're dealing with child loss, you get a lot of outside opinions of people who think, oh, it's been a year, you should be over it by now. And it's just not that simple. When you're dealing with a child loss, my my grandmother, I think, put it the best way is you never get over the loss of a child. You just learn how to cope with it better, how to deal with it better, and you become stronger. Although I will say I do see some people lose child and they just shut down. Sometimes you have to face the pain. Sometimes you have to work through things in order to become stronger, in order to be able to do that. But know that just because someone else is grieving differently than you doesn't mean that your grief isn't valid. And I mean, that's why we reached out to you guys as we for this opportunity to be able to share our stories and help other people recognize that as well. You know, focus on building your marriage, focus on helping other people recognize that you're going to see things and view things and feel things differently, but you can still support each other and help each other out.

Melissa Stone:

Um I just I remember when I told Lawrence that I was thinking about having another baby, and he said to me, if you're going to do this with our last one with the with our last one, um, he said, if we're going to have one more child, one more baby, I need you to feel strong enough that if the worst happens, you'll be able to pull yourself out of it because I don't know if I have the strength to pull you out of it like I have. And so in those years, after losing Thomas before getting pregnant with Porter, I did a lot of work, you know, doing the primary answers, learning to pray by myself again and building my testimony and reading my scriptures and listening more diligently to conference talks and all of the things, you know, that we're told over and over and over and over to do, um, to really strengthen myself so that if it did happen again, that I would be ready. Uh, so that as much as he would try to pull me through if he didn't feel strong enough to do it, that I could do it for myself.

Lawrence Stone:

It was it was a legitimate fear because it took a lot and drained a lot of energy out of me trying to help her get back on track. Because and I it's not that my faith never waved wavered either. I was still having to deal with my grief and work on keeping my faith as well. And so it was it was very taxing to be able to have to help her out with that. And because I mean she would fight me kicking and screaming every step of the way. But, you know, until she started getting stable ground, um, yeah, it was I I wasn't sure if I could have done it a third time. And so I needed her to be sure that she at least could put more effort in or could have a little bit more stable ground, better foundation on Jesus Christ in order to endure it if she had to. Fortunately, never got to that point, but I think she made a lot of great strides by having that conversation. She she realized a lot of things and was able to work on a lot of things for herself.

Alisha Coakley:

Wow. Oh man. So that's our story. So can I ask you guys kind of you talked about how your grief was different? What was really like the most different thing? Like, what was the thing that was like, oh my gosh, how are they doing that when I'm feeling like this?

Scott Brandley:

And also what brought you together?

Alisha Coakley:

Yeah.

Lawrence Stone:

I think we got the gist of the question. So the the biggest difference between the grief I know for me is I I tend to try to hide it and internalize it. And that's why journaling became so important to me and writing stuff down. Even uh Melissa's aunt created a blog for us to post on, and that became very important to me. But but meditation, uh, even going to the temple was was a big deal for me. That became very important. And then one thing I think was important for both of us was finding ways to make sure we were preserving their memories. We do service projects every year around their birthdays. We, like for Christmas, we'll actually take the presents we would have purchased for them, and then we make sure we donate them to an organization. A lot of times it's a foster care type organization that we've donated them to. But we try to find dikes of service. We've we've done meals at the Ronald McDonald House. We've done, we've worked with a local after-school program, we've done a lot of service projects to help keep their memories alive. And so that's something I think has been important for most of us. But I I for me, I struggled with showing a lot of emotion in front of Melissa because I felt like she needed me to be strong, she needed me to be stable. And so I would hide that emotion quite a bit. And that's again why journaling in that kind of private moment became more important to me. But Melissa made it needed more of more interaction, which is interesting because I'm more social than she is. But she needed she needed that interaction to be able to talk and process.

Melissa Stone:

And he was my primary sounding board, like I said, because I didn't really find like a counselor that I jived with. Um another thing that I feel like was really different between the two of us was I felt really stuck. And I think part of that came from the fact that I had such a long physical recovery. And then, you know, I had to kind of find that emotional and spiritual recovery after everything. And so I felt stuck for a really long time, and it felt kind of frustrating to me that it felt like he was moving on and growing and progressing in ways that I wasn't when I felt so stuck for so long, even after we had our third son, our second son, our third baby. Um, I just I felt really, really stuck.

Lawrence Stone:

Um Yeah, right right after the accident, the bishop said, Whenever you guys are ready for calling, let us know. And I said, I'm ready today. Give me a calling. And they they had me teaching Sunday school within a couple of weeks. Melissa, he finally came and said, Would you mind just making the programs for church? And even that was too much for her at the time.

Melissa Stone:

Um and like he said, sometimes it was it felt like dragging, kicking, and screaming to get me to church, to um go to the temple. Temple wasn't as hard as church, surprisingly. Um it felt like after the accident, there were things that kept pulling us back to the temple. Um, his sister left on a mission just a few months after the accident happened, and so we went to the temple with her. He we had weddings to go to, um, and things just kept pulling us back to the temple. And so it felt like going to the temple wasn't nearly as hard as going to church was or even praying and doing those things on my own were. But I was also angry with God, and I don't know that Lawrence ever experienced a lot of that anger like I did until a little later on.

Lawrence Stone:

Not to the same level at least.

Melissa Stone:

I mean, there was a point when you did kind of start to question things.

Lawrence Stone:

Yeah. Well, and and I think part of it with my with my dealing with grief too was I was so focused on helping Melissa out that my grief kind of got put on hold until I think about a year and a half or so later, when I finally felt like Melissa was starting to get a little bit more stable. I was just, I think I was driving to work and the it was, I was thinking to myself, it's interesting that through all this and dealing with that loss of ethney, I've never really questioned my testimony. And then all of a sudden the next thought was, well, should you be questioning your testimony? I mean, this is a pretty big deal. And it was like all of a sudden in that moment, that's when I started having doubts. Because once Melissa had a little bit more stable ground, that's when I started grieving a little bit harder and started having more doubts. And I remember wrestling with that quite a bit. And I wasn't questioning so much whether or not the church was true or whether or not I believed in the gospel, but I was questioning entirely God's existence. Like for me, if God exists, then yeah, this is his church. I'm good with that. But it was really, does God really exist? Why would God let something like this happen to me? And as I wrestled with that, one day I I was just, again, in my car thinking about it and wrestling with it and praying about it. And and this prompting came to me. And it was just a question. It said, well, what would you rather believe? Would you rather believe that this life is it, that you'll never see Ethne again, you'll never be with your family in the eternities? Or would you rather believe that there's life after this, that you are sealed together as a family, that you'll get to be with Melissa and your other kids and be able to raise Ethney and be with her again. And when it was put in that perspective, it was like a no-brainer. I was like, okay, no matter what, I'm going to choose to believe this. This is what I would rather believe. And I remember the scripture that you don't get that testimony until after the trial of your faith. And I said, I'm just going to keep moving forward, acting in faith, believing, and eventually I'll get more stable answers. But I have to go through this trial of my faith first. And it was interesting because I remember preparing for a mission in my life, multiple people telling me, when you bear your testimony, you have to say I know, because I know it was so much more powerful than I believe. And I felt like I was downgrading my faith at the same time, even though I was excited because I was like, okay, I'm recommitting, but now my faith is less than what it was before because I no longer can say that I know. Now I'm just saying I believe. And I felt like it had been downgraded. And I remember it was the very next general conference, Elder Holland talking about a young man coming to him and telling him that he's not sure he knows, but that he can believe. And Elder Holland talks about embracing that young man and how great it was that he believed and how miracles happen from believing. And there's so many people who start off with believing. And I remember shortly after that reading in my scriptures about how belief is one of believing is one of the gifts of the spirit. And all of a sudden I realized that there is a lot more power in that belief that I have and in believing than I ever realized was possible. And I no longer felt like my faith was downgraded. And it was it was a very important moment for me to understand how important just saying I believe when those doubts came about in my eternal growth and progression.

Melissa Stone:

And when Lawrence told me that he was having this struggle, I'll be honest, it was kind of refreshing for me because I felt like I had struggled so much and I hadn't seen him struggle. And so knowing that that he was also struggling helped kind of lift me up, helped buoy me up in that yes, we were in this together. We were we were just experiencing it differently. And um just knowing that he had received so much confirmation um helped me kind of pull through and and and push on to.

Lawrence Stone:

Yeah, it was very much a tender mercy for us for sure.

Alisha Coakley:

How long, Melissa, how long did this take for you to kind of get to the point where you felt like like your testimony was strong enough and your your in your ability to function in in a healthier, more whole way. Like like how long do you think that that kind of took you to get through that to get to that point?

Melissa Stone:

I mean, it took me honestly, probably a couple years, even after we'd had our next baby. I still struggled spiritually. Um that first year, I kind of lived in in a fog. Like I didn't I couldn't get out and see people. I struggled with going to church, like I mentioned before. Um I struggled with prayer. I because of the my brain injuries that I'd had, reading scriptures was difficult, reading was difficult in general. Um but I did go to church pretty faithfully almost every week. Um, and I went to the temple, and those things I think kind of kept me going and kept me from completely losing my testimony and falling away.

Lawrence Stone:

I mean, some of those weeks she went just because she couldn't take care of Edward by herself, and so she had to go wherever I was going. And so it was again, sometimes it was kicking and screaming, and sometimes it was a little bit more voluntary.

Melissa Stone:

Um, but I think round about the year mark, I started kind of seeing things differently, and I kind of started finding some because I was I was really angry with God, like I mentioned, and I think I started finding some forgiveness there for for everything that had happened, and finding some forgiveness for myself because I felt extremely guilty because I was the one driving the car. And I found it was easy to find forgiveness for the other driver, but it was really difficult to find forgiveness for myself, and sometimes I still struggle with that, and it's been 13 and a half years. But around about that year mark, we actually moved out of our apartment and bought our first home. And then they asked us to speak in our ward right around Easter after we'd moved in. And I think that's when I finally started like things started clicking, like, oh, I should start reading my scriptures again, I should start studying conference talks again, um, and some of these other things that helped me find my way back and and rebuild my testimony after everything.

Scott Brandley:

Oh, I have a question. Now that you've had some time from those tragedies in your life, um, what brings you peace and and how do you find joy in the journey and in the future?

Lawrence Stone:

I mean, the biggest thing that helps bring us joy and helps us find peace is definitely spending time with our family. Like I mentioned, going through this has definitely made me a better husband and a better father. Uh, you know, it's it's interesting because we were so focused, or I was, I, you know, I I recommitted to, okay, this isn't gonna, this isn't gonna break our marriage, and we really recommitted to each other. We we find that the time we have together is tends to be more quality. We've we've had a lot of friends that have gone through marital struggles, and and it's interesting as you look at the statistics. Usually people struggle around the first year or two, and then it's year seven, and then year fourteen, and about every seven years you see a spike in divorces happening. And you hear people refer to this as a seven-year itch, and that's we've been together 17 years now, and we just haven't felt that because 13 years ago we had to go through this, and and the commitment we've had to each other. I mean, that doesn't mean it's been all sunshine and roses and butterflies, but we've, you know, it's we just haven't had those same issues because we've learned to hold on to each other, and we find a lot of joy in being with our family, find a lot of joy in going to the temple even and and remembering our children, you know, something we do. We for Ethne Thomas' birthday and for our anniversary, we go to the temple and we do ceilings because we think one of the best ways that we can celebrate their lives is by reuniting other parents with their children. And so the temple is another place where we find a lot of joy and happiness and being able to do those ceilings especially is a big deal for us. And we talked about serving others as you know, service projects to remember them and and and help us stay focused on them. That's that's become a big deal for us as well.

Melissa Stone:

And we find a lot of joy with our living children. They are so full of light and life and joy, and uh, we talk to them about Ethne and Thomas, and they know them, and they they know why we serve and why we have stayed in the church and why we serve in the temple and why we value our family so much, because of those covenants and those promises that we've made that you know tell us that we will get to be with them again and that we'll get to raise them, and they'll be they're that they're still part of our family.

Alisha Coakley:

So you guys have had you've had other people that you've been working with who've gone through child loss, correct?

Lawrence Stone:

So yeah. It's interesting. We haven't worked directly with a lot of couples face to face, but Melissa had a service project that she was doing for for other families dealing with grief that I think really helped her out a lot.

Melissa Stone:

Um so shortly after losing ethne, my mom actually had this idea that we should make something that a mother could bury with her child and also keep with her. And so we started making bracelets um to donate to hospitals like primary children's and other hospitals when a mother experiences pregnancy or child loss, so that they have a bracelet that they can wear and that they can bury with their baby, or I I know some who have put them on like urns with their baby's ashes. Um, and so I started doing that, and because of that, I have connected with other women who um who have experienced loss, and they've told me how much that means to them. Um it's it's been interesting because in the ward I grew up in, um, two other girls that I was friends with growing up have also experienced child loss and pregnancy loss. One lost her baby at like 36 weeks, and another lost her son to a complicated case of COVID, and it was just heartbreaking. He was, I think, three years old. And because I'm kind of ahead of them on this road, I've been able to support them and connect with them and guide them. Um, some other ways that we've connected with others is that we're part of an organization called the Tears Foundation, and they help to provide the big thing they do is they help to provide money to pay for funerals when families experience child and pregnancy loss. And uh we got involved with that organization here in Idaho, and so we help with some of the fundraising efforts and and some of the other things that they do to support families through grief and child loss.

Lawrence Stone:

Yeah, I think for me, we haven't been as focused on couples. I think part of it's been hard, but that's writing this book has kind of pushed us, and so we're trying to find more efforts to be able to do that too. And that's one of the things we're hoping to be able to do with this book is it gives us a segue to interact with more people like that one-on-one. Because we found ways to interact them with them in like groups and things of that nature and find ways of supporting them even if we're not face to face. But hopefully this gives us an opportunity to help us do more one-on-one, more face-to-face type stuff.

Alisha Coakley:

Now, what's the what's the name of your book?

Lawrence Stone:

It's Our Stories. Except for the way we spell stories, it's story, and then the the S is in parentheses. So that way it's referring to our story of dealing with child loss, but we each have our own individual stories in that journey, is is how we titled it. And we self-published through Amazon. So right now it's only available on Amazon, but you can get it for Kindle or paperback.

Alisha Coakley:

Right. So it's through Amazon. Uh we'll go ahead and we can add a link in the description. So anyone who is interested in purchasing, they can go ahead and do that. Um, and they can help to support you guys, but also to support others who are going through something similar. Um, is there any other any other things that listeners can do to to help? Anything that that you guys could ask for?

Lawrence Stone:

Well, I mean, when when you know someone who's dealing with lost, there's a couple things we always say you can do to help that person. The and we each kind of have our own recommendations we make, but I always tell people when they ask me, what do I do if I know someone who's dealing with lost or grieving? I say, for me, one of the best things, one of the most important things that people did for me is they were praying for us and they told us they were praying for us. Because I found a lot of strength in knowing that so many people there were hopeful for us and supporting us and available for us. And I know if you're someone who's knows someone who's dealing with grief, I know that can go a long way in in helping helping them out.

Melissa Stone:

Um and I don't know, in in this social media era that we live in, thoughts, thoughts and prayers get kind of a bad rap and people get frustrated and they want to do, they want to take action, they want to do something that feels more tangible than just thoughts and prayers. And so the other thing that I recommend is if you know someone who's grieving, no matter what it is they're grieving, it it can be really overwhelming in your mind to think of things. Like a lot of people will go to someone and say, What can I do to help? And that can feel really overwhelming and feel like just one more thing on top of everything else that you're going through. And so if you want to help and serve and actually do something more tangible, then you come up with something that you are capable of doing for them and go to them and say, I want to do this for you. And is it better to do it on this day or this day? Um, so like I want to bring you dinner, can I bring it to you Tuesday or Thursday? Um, things like that. And just kind of taking something off of their plate for them.

Lawrence Stone:

And as far as us, you mentioned obviously let us pitch the book and we appreciate that. But if there's anyone out there who's who's dealing with grief and they want to reach out and connect with us, uh, you know, we we would be more than willing to talk to them. Or if there's we we've been invited recently, we were invited to a uh like a couple's weekend. They they gave us one day notice, so we weren't able to go, unfortunately. We're hoping to be able to set up something in the future. But to be able to come and talk about parenting and and grief, and we've even been working on a on a devotional. We've where we're close to BYU, Idaho. We might even we've talked about going up there and talking to some of the married couples that maybe are dealing with miscarriages and are struggling with fertility and letting them know, you know, because validating their grief, because a lot of times it's amazing how many times we've run into people who've had miscarriages and they just don't feel like their grief is valid because they you know they weren't able to carry the baby for a certain for X number of weeks or whatever, and you know, they're they're still grieving, they're still dealing with that loss. And so being able to connect with them and and share our stories and talk to them and answer questions as best we can.

Melissa Stone:

Or even just listen.

Lawrence Stone:

Yeah, or even just listen. That's something we're willing to do. So we're if anyone's looking for anything like that, we'd be happy to come and we just we want to help as many people as possible. I was telling Melissa the other day, I would love for 500,000 people to get a hold of our book. Whether that means we sell 500,000 copies or we sell one copy and that person shares it with 499,999 of their closest friends, we just wanted to get it out there.

Alisha Coakley:

That's a wonderful goal. I love it. And I I love Melissa, what you suggested where we can help make the decision process easier for those who are grieving by giving them options and not just asking them a random open-ended question, but just really narrowing it down and being like, I can do this. Do you need me to do this on this day or this day? You know, um, I think that's I think that's fantastic.

Scott Brandley:

So yeah, I think that that's a cool I suggestion as well. So thank you guys for sharing your story with us today. Um, do you have any final thoughts you'd like to share before we kind of wrap things up?

Lawrence Stone:

One other thing we might throw out there too is if you know someone who's dealing with a loss, especially child loss, and you know the anniversary of their passing or their birthday is coming up, reach out to them and let them know that you're thinking about them and their child. One of the biggest things that parents worry about when they're when they lose their child is that those children will be forgotten. And so knowing that you remember them is a really big deal. Like you might not think it's that big a deal, you might not think it's that significant, but to those parents, that's a big deal.

Alisha Coakley:

Awesome. Oh man. Well, thank you guys so much for coming on here today and for sharing your story with us and sharing just the ways that you guys have been able to not only find light, but use your pain to create light for others. Um, I really hope that that the mission and the purpose that you guys have in this book and in helping um to give others some guidance and some some advice, direction, that you guys will be able to continue to get all of the resources and the people together that you need in order to support that cause. So thank you guys again for that. Um and thank you to our listeners for tuning in. Um, we highly encourage you guys to do your five-second missionary work. Click share. Make sure that this episode gets out to others because you just don't know who's dealing with what or who will have to do with deal with things that are similar in the future, um, where this could be really, really helpful to them.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah. Um, and if you have a story that you'd like to share, um, like Lawrence and Melissa, go to latterdaylights.com or send us an email at latterdaylights at gmail.com and we'll get you on and let's share your experience and your story so we can help inspire each other in this crazy world that we live in.

Alisha Coakley:

Absolutely. All right, guys. Well, thank you again, Melissa and Lawrence, for coming on here today. And um, everyone who's listening, make sure you tune in for another episode of Latter day Latterly Latter day Lights next week. We'll see you guys later.

Scott Brandley:

Take care. Bye bye.

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Scott Brandley

Host
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Alisha Coakley

Co-host