GREENVILLE, Mich. — The Greenville community is in mourning the loss of a 14-year-old boy who was hit and killed in a hit-and-run on Tuesday.
It happened around 9:30 p.m.
Mental health services were offered at Greenville Middle School Thursday for all students who need support. Thursday, FOX 17 also sat down with a mother from the community who knows all too well what it's like to experience the loss of a child.
Signs around town make it clear that Greenville is "Jacket Strong."
“Fortunately, I think our community is doing, like, just a brilliant job of rallying around this family and collecting them money and sending meals,” Dawn Burgess said.
Support online is only growing for the family of a boy hit and killed on Wise Road, while walking with his two friends.
Just a few miles down that same road, across the county line, FOX 17 sat down with Dawn Burgess, a mother who calls Greenville her community, and knows what it's like to lose a child.
“My son died in 2009 after a two-year battle with cancer,” Dawn said. “We lived in this community, and we lived through that in this community. I know how good this community is.”
Burgess wears her son's name, Brayden, around her neck. She knows for the mother who just lost a son, the grief won't ever truly go away. Burgess offers some advice to the community, on how best to support the family, aside from meals and money, which she says are also incredibly important in the aftermath of such a tragedy.
“Not acting like he didn’t exist. I think that’s one of the hardest things. Sometimes people are so concerned about saying something wrong or hurtful, they just kind of gloss over their life and their death like it didn’t happen, and like they weren’t really here,” Burgess said
Burgess says it's way too soon for the passage of time to comfort this family, and it never really does.
“It doesn’t end in a year or two years. We are 14 years out now. I still have really hard days sometimes. They will too,” Burgess said.
Burgess, sharing a message for the mother of the 14-year-old killed on that rural road.
“My heart is with hers. It’s so awful right now. I’d love to say it gets better. I don’t think it gets better. I think it gets different. But it will not always be like it is today. I promise. I promise. It won’t always be the first thing you think about when you wake up. It won’t always be a giant weight on your chest. But for right now, it is. It’s the worst thing in the world. It’s the worst thing in the world I can think of," Burgess said.
