Where Grief Grows Gardens

Some wounds never fully heal, yet they transform into passages through which new purpose enters a life. This is the story of Rhonda, a mother who journeyed through significant loss and emerged with the strength to help others.

Rhonda had done everything right. The timing was perfect—four years between children, just as planned. Her first pregnancy had blessed her with a daughter in 1998. When she conceived again, she expected a similar experience. 

But as Rhonda entered her second trimester, something changed. A persistent illness took hold, one she initially dismissed. "Every pregnancy is different," she told herself, continuing to work long hours helping her employer build his business. Her loyalty and work ethic never wavered, even as her body began to signal problems.

The third trimester brought excruciating back pain. Rhonda remembers sitting through a wedding with a church hymnal tucked behind her for relief. A severe virus followed, though her doctor reassured her, "You're fine, take some medicine, you'll be okay."

At her 37-week checkup on March 15th, the nurse practitioner found nothing concerning. Yet a strong intuition told Rhonda something wasn't right. She pleaded for another ultrasound, but was met with dismissal: "Sorry, honey. You've had completely normal pregnancies. We only give one ultrasound and that's all you can have." Rhonda left the office with her concerns unaddressed, her maternal instinct overlooked.

The following Monday morning, Rhonda awoke to unbearable pain. Despite her husband's concern, she insisted on going to work. "I have so much to finish before maternity leave," she explained. While helping her four-year-old daughter that morning, she collapsed on the floor, overwhelmed by pain and exhaustion. Still, she persevered, arriving at work by 7:30 AM.

As the pain intensified, a coworker drove her to the hospital where her husband met her, camcorder in hand, excited for what should have been a joyful day. Rhonda remembers wearing brown leggings and a brown top with sparkles on the bib—clothes chosen for what she expected to be a happy occasion.

The mood in the examination room shifted when the doctor struggled to locate the baby's heartbeat. "We keep losing it," the doctor said, her expression revealing concern before her words could. A specialist was called—Dr. Katherine Brubaker, who confirmed the worst: fluid was building in the baby's stomach, indicating heart failure. An emergency C-section was the only option.

While waiting for surgery, Rhonda called her mother, who rushed to the hospital. In that moment of vulnerability, she confessed her deepest fear: "If she dies, I die. I can't do this." Somehow, Rhonda knew her baby wouldn't survive.

The operating room fell silent as her daughter emerged into the world without a cry. The medical team quickly took the baby away while the doctors hurriedly completed the procedure.

In the ICU, Rhonda's husband, father, and their pastor gathered as her daughter fought against impossible odds. The machines beeped steadily, trying to support a heart that had formed incompletely. The diagnosis was fiber elastosis—the internal fibers in her heart weren't connected. This wasn't a simple hole that could be repaired; the fundamental structure was flawed.

Two and a half hours after birth, cradled in her father's arms, baby Tiana passed away.

When Rhonda was finally brought to recovery, the doctor gently asked, "Do you understand that the baby is gone?" Through her grief, she responded, "Yes, I do. It's okay, we're gonna try again." Even in her deepest pain, Rhonda clung to the possibility of future joy. She kept repeating her intention to try again, while the doctor repeatedly confirmed the reality of her loss. It wasn't Rhonda responding; it was grief speaking through her.

She had just two hours with Tiana's body—a tragically brief window to memorialize a lifetime of hopes and dreams. Years later, Rhonda discovered CuddleCot, an organization providing cooling units that allow parents more time with babies who have passed. This technology gives families days instead of hours to bond, take photos, and say proper goodbyes. The absence of this option during her own loss inspired a mission that would eventually help countless other families.

Tiana was perfect in appearance—full-term, pink-skinned, with beautiful lips. Looking at her, no one would have known anything was wrong. This reality made the loss even more difficult to process. Rhonda wasn't just grieving a baby; she was grieving all the milestones she would never witness—the first steps, first words, graduation, marriage. At family gatherings, an empty chair stands as Tiana's memorial. Today, with her oldest daughter married and Kalia now twenty-one, that chair remains—a reminder of the sister who connects them across time.

Rhonda's grief manifested differently than her husband's. While she immediately sought therapy and counseling, desperate to understand God's purpose in her pain, he experienced delayed grief, processing Tiana's death slowly over two decades. Their marriage endured this divergent healing, a testament to their resilience.

Just as Rhonda was beginning to rebuild her life eight weeks later, another blow fell. Returning to work, she discovered her severance letter on the photocopy machine. The employer she had loyally served had decided to let her go during her darkest hour. The financial impact was significant—she had been the primary breadwinner.

During this period of compounded loss, Rhonda found herself drawn to the cemetery daily. In an area called "Baby Land," she noticed many parents couldn't afford proper gravestones for their children. They created makeshift markers with styrofoam and plastic letters, which groundskeepers routinely removed. The parents would retrieve these humble memorials from a discard pile near a tree and replace them, a heartbreaking cycle that Rhonda witnessed repeatedly.

This observation sparked Rhonda's next chapter. "We're going to buy gravestones for babies," she announced to her husband one day. Despite their financial struggles—"We can barely buy groceries," he reminded her—she was determined. Rhonda began making soaps and body scrubs in her kitchen, selling them to fund her mission.

The first gravestone they purchased wasn't for a stranger but for Rhonda's grandmother's child who had died of pneumonia decades earlier. Her grandmother, then in her eighties, had never spoken of this loss because society had discouraged such conversations. Through this gesture, her grandmother finally found healing for a grief she had carried silently for a lifetime. Similarly, Rhonda's own mother had been the same age as her daughter when her sister died, remembering only "them coming in with a body bag, taking her body away, and never speaking of her again."

This pattern of silenced grief strengthened Rhonda's resolve to speak openly about Tiana. The gravestones became her mission, and over the years, she has provided many stones for families in San Jose who couldn't afford them. Each donation carries a message: you are seen, your child mattered, and you are not alone.

In time, Rhonda welcomed another daughter, Kalia, delivered by the same doctor who had delivered Tiana. During Kalia's birth, Dr. Brubaker had tears streaming down her face—a moment of joy mixed with remembrance. They honored this connection by giving Kalia the middle name Katherine after Dr. Katherine Brubaker. To this day, Rhonda stays in touch with Dr. Brubaker. 

The pregnancy with Kalia brought its own challenges—constant fear that history might repeat itself. And while Kalia brought immeasurable joy, her arrival couldn't erase the need for continued healing. Rhonda realized that in her haste to move forward, she had neglected the depth of her grief. Her older daughter, only four when Tiana died, had suffered from her emotional absence during that critical time. Years of repair followed, rebuilding relationships damaged by unprocessed trauma.

As Rhonda continued the healing process, her husband began his own delayed grief journey, facing emotions he had long suppressed. Their healing paths, though different in timing, eventually converged in a shared desire for joy without dismissing their loss. Rhonda learned that complete healing isn't the absence of sadness but the ability to be fully present in life despite it.

Her faith evolved through this journey, offering comfort in unexpected ways. During a prayer experience years later, Rhonda received a glimpse of Tiana—a vision of a little girl with curly hair and brown eyes running through a field of yellow flowers, conveying that she was safe. Her husband had experienced something similar shortly after Tiana's death—a dream on Easter Sunday of Jesus holding their daughter on a grassy hill.

Looking back, Rhonda sees how Tiana's brief existence has created lasting meaning. "She's probably the greatest missionary ever," she reflects, recognizing that sometimes our deepest purpose emerges from our greatest pain. Her daughter's short life opened doors of compassion through which she has reached countless women experiencing similar losses. 

When people still fresh in their grief ask how Rhonda found meaning in her loss, she gently suggests that perhaps they're caught in viewing tragedy as something done to them rather than a painful reality of an imperfect world. "Would I ever want to experience that again? Absolutely not. But there has to be something greater," she explains with compassion. "We must first engage the grief to be able to heal and find joy again." The order of a parent burying a child violates our fundamental understanding of how life should unfold, creating a dissonance that only acceptance can begin to resolve.

This surrender, Rhonda acknowledges with honesty, is extremely difficult—"Surrender sucks!" She likens it to riding a roller coaster for the first time: the fearful climb, followed by the moment when fear gives way to a kind of freedom as you finally let go of control. Through surrendering her pain to God, allowing her anger and confusion to be fully expressed, Rhonda found not an answer to "why," but a way forward through "what now."

In her deepest despair, Rhonda had said, "If she dies, I die." Part of her did die in that hospital room, but from that loss emerged someone with a deeper understanding of life's fragility and a stronger trust in God's purpose, even when mysterious. Her wound became the source from which she now helps others navigate grief and find faith in life's darkest moments.

To connect with Rhonda, follow her on Instagram at realityoflife02, or on her website (www.rhondavelez.com) or Rhonda.velez02@gmail.com