Grief leads to growth for Tjornehoj family

By Meg Heaton

The loss of a child is every parent's worst fear. How to go on after such a loss is a great mystery to those who haven't experienced it. For Kris Tjornehoj, the journey has been full of great grief but also great growth.

Kris and Dan Tjornehoj of Hudson lost their four-month-old daughter Anna on June 26, 1997. Her cause of death was Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or SIDS. Prior to her death she was a very healthy baby, the only one of the Tjornehoj's three children to be born full term. In her mother's words, she was "perfectly normal."

Kris remembers the smallest details of the morning of June 26. It was warm. She and the children, Anna, Jessica, 8 and John, 5, had returned only a few days before from a trip to Chicago where Dan, an attorney, was attending the American Medical Association convention. Kris, the former band director at Hudson High School, recalls all the doctors there who admired her beautiful, healthy baby.

She awoke with a start that morning and checked the clock. 7:09 a.m. Anna had slept through her six o'clock feeding. Kris got up and went into her room.

The baby was lying on her side, her face next to the slats on the crib. There was nothing around her face. She appeared to be sleeping but Kris couldn't rouse her. "There was nothing."

She immediately dialed 911 and then began CPR. She had taken infant CPR when she was in the hospital for Anna's birth.

"I didn't think she was gone. I thought, 'yes, she stopped breathing but we'll get her going again.'" Within minutes Anna's room was filled with people trying to revive her.

Jessica and John were both up. Jessica retreated to the den and wouldn't come out. John sat in Anna's room watching everything that was going on. He even warned his mother not to "hurt" Anna when she was giving her CPR.

While some details are crystal clear about that morning, others are just part of the fog of that day. Kris remembers that the staff in the Hudson Medical Center emergency room kept working on her daughter until Kris gave them a sign that she was ready to let Anna go.

"One of the nurses there was a former student of mine. She caught my eye and she had this sort of peaceful look on her face. I knew that it was time to stop. They all backed out of the room then, but they had waited until I was ready to let go. I am so thankful for that."

The family's pediatrician, Dr. Kari Campbell, tracked down Dan who was still at the medical convention. All he remembers of those first hours was being put on plane by the president of the AMA.

"I think it was harder for him because he wasn't there when it happened, (he) didn't have that time in the emergency room with her. He didn't see everything that happened," said Kris.

When she came out of the emergency room, Kris found a waiting room full of family and friends. "I never called anyone. I didn't think about it. I remember thinking why would I call with news like this. I was going to wait until she was all right again."

It was Kris's sister who took over notifying family and friends, and for the next two weeks the family was never alone. She describes their home as a hub of activity, full of people supplying everything they needed. "I was on automatic pilot, planning the funeral, going through the motions. There were people around morning, noon and night. I remember wondering why they were all there and at the same time thinking what would we do without them."

The first day the family was alone in their home on 13th Street was July 4 and "it was awful." That began some of the toughest days for Kris. She wanted to hibernate. She remembers playing tennis with a friend only because the friend insisted and picked her up. She felt angry and could feel no pleasure in anything.

One day her mother came and picked her up along with Jessica and John for a trip to Shell Lake to visit her sister. It was a trip Kris had always loved, but not this day. She went under protest and recalls sitting down near the water with her arms folded across her chest, determined not to enjoy herself. Her brother-in-law asked her to help his son into his water skis. "I told him no! He couldn't believe it." The family finally succeeded in getting Kris into the boat for a ride and her brother-in-law said he wasn't taking her back to shore until she water-skied. " I said no way. I felt like I didn't deserve to have fun ever again. But he told me no. 'Your children need to see you living again. It's time.' And I did it."

Kris believes it was their family and friends that saw her through the worst of times. "You need them and a solid church community to get through something like this. I had that all in place before this happened and that made all the difference." She recalled that her pastor, Steven Kramer, came to see her everyday at 4:30 p.m. in the weeks following Anna's death. "He just checked in. A lot of people did things like that."

The rest of the summer went like that. Experts recommend routine as a way of coping. It wasn't the way Kris operated before but it did seem to help. "I learned to accept and savor the routine, the little things that happen every day."

The children needed help as well and not just from their parents. The Tjornehojs brought people into their home to work with Jessica and John. According to her mother, Jessica suppressed her grief. John was able to verbalize his. Kris said they left the children alone with people who knew how to help them specifically. The children both have memory books for Anna. Just recently John made Packer and Viking flags for his sister in his book.

Kris said she and Dan have grieved differently for their daughter. She remembered how one health professional that worked with grieving couples explained it. "It's like you're on two different elevators and you keep stopping on different floors and you can't connect. But one day you both get off on the same floor and then you can be a couple again." Kris has learned all she can about SIDS. Dan didn't feel the need. But he did change jobs. "He reprioritized I think. He made up his mind he didn't want to travel so much. I never compared my grief to Dan's, neither did he. But I know we are a stronger family for this. That is the little silver lining you find in even the worst losses."

In all her reading and research about SIDS, Kris hasn't found many answers. But that is the nature of SIDS. It is the cause of death only when everything else has been ruled out. "My daughter didn't fit into any of the categories of children at risk for SIDS but it still happened."

She relived every moment of Anna's life looking for something she could have done differently, something she should have noticed. She had to speak with the medical examiners three times before she was convinced there was nothing she could have done to save her daughter's life. "It took awhile but I have complete peace now."

That fall Kris returned to her position as professor of music at UW-River Falls. Many people thought it was too soon but she was determined. She filled the bulletin board outside her office with Anna's obituary and information on SIDS. She also let it be known that she didn't want to talk about Anna's death at work. "It was the most natural thing to do, to return to work. My work is great comfort to me."

As for the future, the Tjornehoj family goes on, but differently and probably stronger than before. The man who used the elevator analogy for couples had another one for families in the process of rebuilding after the loss of a loved one. Kris recalled, "When a child is lost, it is like a glass that is shattered. Your world is in pieces and the glass is forever stained. But you can pick up those pieces and build a stained glass window. You pick the pieces this time, the strong and the beautiful ones and create something even richer than before. I like to think of it that way. I believe that it's true."