Steve Mitchell was a big man with a big heart, and while they don’t have direct memories of him, his daughter Ava, 8, and granddaughter Liah, 7, have been processing the grief of losing him in 2017 to complications following a seizure.
As part of that process, the girls — who both attend Amy Beverland Elementary School in Lawrence Township — and Ava’s mother, Jan Mitchell, put together a story/coloring book about Steve Mitchell. “Happy Heavenly Birthday, Daddy!” was published in early February, a few weeks before the seven-year anniversary of Steve Mitchell’s death.
The girls said their dad was a good cook, especially items like steak and pork chops.
“He was a better cook than my mom,” Ava said, prompting a laugh from Jan Mitchell, who said she’s willing to admit that.
Jan Mitchell said Liah wasn’t even born when Steve died and Ava was only a year old, but the family keeps his memory alive.
“We have his pictures up around the house and we talk about him,” she said. “I remember him a lot, and they decided to do something that would be commemorative of his presence.”
Mitchell said they started by sitting down and simply talking.
“And having them share about their thoughts and their feelings — how they feel as children without having the dad any longer in the home — or the grandpa,” she said.
They wrote down those thoughts, made sure to check the spelling carefully and hired Christina Rudenko to create illustrations to accompany their story. The result is a colorful book filled with happy memories of Steve Mitchell. While his death is part of the story, the book is geared toward young children and maintains a positive message about keeping a loved one’s memory alive.
Ava said her favorite part of the book is an illustration of her dad walking up a set of gold stairs to a gate, a pair of wings on his shoulders. It was when “God decided to make Daddy all better by taking him to Heaven,” the book states.
Liah pointed out the black-and-white pages at the back of the book that are meant for coloring and said those are her favorite.
Jan Mitchell said it’s unique to combine a story book with pages for kids to color.
“That gave us an opportunity to have the black and white sketches for children who also have lost their parents to be able to color in their emotions, so to speak — like color therapy for children,” she said.
Mitchell said it was good for the family to get together, share their feelings and celebrate Steve Mitchell through memories. She said that at more than 6 feet and about 225 pounds, he was “a lot of man,” and had a big heart, too.
“Everybody he was friends with, if he said he loved you, that was it, you were his for life,” she said. “A great big heart, great big laugh, always happy and upbeat — never really saw him upset. He had his moments, but it was almost like his default posture was that of joy and happiness. He was always happy.”
Steve Mitchell was part of a prison ministry at Putnamville Correctional Facility in Greencastle, driving there monthly to work with inmates, Jan Mitchell said.
He also had lupus, an autoimmune disease that can cause a variety of health conditions. One of those is epileptic seizures, which is what led to his death in 2017 at the age of 47.
“One day when he was coming home from doing his prison work, he actually had an epileptic seizure as he was coming into the house,” Jan Mitchell said. “He had an epileptic seizure, fell, hit his head onto a wall, broke his neck in three places, which paralyzed him immediately. He stayed in the hospital system for five and a half months straight.”
Jan Mitchell said her husband went into heart failure four times the first month and was resuscitated each time. The doctors didn’t think he’d be able to move again, but, she said, he recovered enough to be able to hold Ava on her first birthday. He moved to a rehab facility for a while, and Jan Mitchell said they were talking about bringing him home, but then he died after developing bedsores that became septic.
She said writing the book with the girls was healing for her, as well, and she hopes the book will help people of all ages know it’s OK to talk about grief.
“I think a lot of times as parents, we try to shield our children by pretending to be hard, trying to keep that strength,” she said. “It’s OK to cry in front of your children. It’s OK to allow them to cry. So, just allowing them that process, and letting them have that — it actually bonds the family. And that’s one thing, I will say, (that) I shied from at the beginning. But then I had to learn to open up and allow them to see Mom cry, which opened them, and allowed them to be able to share their feelings and emotions, as well.”
“Happy Heavenly Birthday, Daddy” is available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble bookstores.
She Moves Forward
Jan Mitchell has channeled the grief of losing her husband, Steve Mitchell, toward helping others going through their own grieving journeys. Mitchell is now a certified grief coach and founded an organization called She Moves Forward that offers different grief therapy services.
Mitchell also has written three books for adults about coping with grief. They are “Suddenly Single Widows Edition: Navigating Grief While Colliding with Purpose,” “Suddenly Single: Surviving The Demise Of Your Relationship” and “How to Not Go Cuckoo While Caregiving: 7 Tips to Manage Stress and Grief While Caring for Your Loved One.” They’re all available through Amazon.
For more about Mitchell’s grief coaching services, visit shemovesforwardinc.com.
