By Paul Gessell

Textile artist Carl Stewart and I are sitting at a Centrepointe coffee shop talking about dead children and the ways they haunt the relatives who survive them. As Stewart so correctly points out, we often have very few clear memories of a deceased child, because that child may have lived only a few years. Therefore, there are no memories of heart-to-heart conversations, nor no memories of that child playing hockey, graduating from school, getting married, pursuing a career.

So, instead of memories to cherish, we cling to photographs or possessions of the deceased. That is certainly the case with Stewart’s brother, Owen, who was run over by a car and killed Sept. 19, 1970, at age 3, in front of his home in Carleton, P.E.I. Carl, then aged 5, was the only witness, aside from the car’s driver, to Owen’s death. (more…)