a couple months ago, i read zach the tragic story of a little, 3-year-old girl, meghan, who had passed away when a dresser fell on her, suffocating her within minutes. my heart broke as i read this mama’s letter to her daughter, a twin, who had been taken from this world too soon…her grief, guilt and love. her main goal is to now provide a resource for families, just like hers, to prevent families from having to experience a tragedy like hers.
that night, zach and i went back and forth, and i’m embarrassed to admit, debating which pieces of furniture to anchor. some because we didn’t think they were all that big, others because we had planned to change out ‘soon enough’. we decided we would anchor all dressers in the girls room, and all but one in our bedroom, mainly because we had planned to change it out for another dresser within a week or so. i ordered these anchors on amazon and they arrived by the end of the week. we made time, anchored the dressers and called it good…
months went by, we had miller and got busy with our life as a family of 5.

sunday morning, zach was putting clothes away in our bedroom with lila, but had walked to the bathroom. i was cleaning up around the house and had walked into the family room to pick up  mills with piper…
then we heard the screams..and then the huge crash.

zach made it in first and i heard him yelling in a panicked voice, ‘you’re okay, you’re okay…’ and i made it in not too far behind him to this:

from what lila says, she was ‘climbing’ and it ‘fell down’. we’re not sure what she was trying to get but it came toppling down. she had to have been on the side because she came out with only a bang on the knee, praise god. the last two nights i have had nightmares playing the event over and over again with what could have been and i wake up thanking God it was only ‘what could have been’ rather than what actually happened.

while this is a large dresser, zach had literally been leaning on it months ago when we were deciding whether to anchor it or not and we decided it would be fine until we switched it…

this could have been prevented.
we could have prevented this.

we were both shaking and looked at each other because we knew this was our fault.
i can tell my 2 year olds until i’m blue in the face that they shouldn’t climb on furniture but the reality is that they might. they don’t have the reasoning skills, they see something they want and they don’t have the self-control to think ‘it might fall on me so i shouldn’t climb it….’

even the smallest of dressers, the sturdiest of dressers should be anchored and i urge you, with meggie’s mom… to anchor the furniture. the tv’s, the dressers, armoir, toy shelf.. anchor it.
because you never ever want to assume ‘it could never happen to me…’

you could be the safest parent in the world… but if your furniture isn’t anchored, it could be deadly.

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