NEWINGTON
Town Crier
‘A Gift of Love’ By Alex Syphers Staff Writer
As we go about our daily routines, driving to work in the morning, meeting friends, and running errands, it is important to stop and appreciate the subtleties of life. This message is often heard and all too often quickly forgotten. But for those who grasp the importance of this message, life can start anew; uncut, complete. For Newington resident, Anette Schutze-Urban that realization came after the death of her 17-year-old son. Anette recently self-published her powerful story about the life and death of her son through her novel, “A Gift of Love — A Volume 51, No. 51
Journey of Courage and Powerful Transformation.” “It’s a spiritual journey about what happens when life throws us a curve ball,” she said. On Aug. 11, 1990, Anette, then living in Denmark, gave birth to an 8-pound boy, her son, Martin. “If somebody had told me on the day I got pregnant what my life would be, I would have faked a headache,” she said, “I wouldn’t have done it, yet, looking back it was the greatest gift. My outlook on life has changed.” Due to a lengthy and complicated delivery, the doctors told Anette that her son, Martin would never fully develop. This was compounded by the fact that during the delivery he had been deprived
Friday, January 14, 2011
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Anette Schutze-Urban poses with her son, Martin, in a photo taken before his death in 2007. Anette has recently self-published a novel chronicling her years with Martin and her outlook on life after his death.
of oxygen for too long. He would require constant care his entire life. This is when her life began as Martin’s mother. She spent the next 17 years caring for her son day and night. Martin was often confined to a wheelchair and had to be tube-fed throughout his life. Anette would pass into sleep every evening worrying if Martin would stop breathing in his sleep. “I was living with death every day, so I always treated every day like it was the last day,” she said. “He always knew that he was loved so that when death did take him, I didn’t have anything left unsaid.” Martin outlived the expectations of many doctors who said he would pass early in his life. “But God wouldn’t let him go,” said Anette. “He was on the brink many times. To live in this fear was normal for me — feeding tubes and the like — I would do it all again to have him back,” she said. In 2007 Martin passed away. “When you have gone through the death of a child, certain things don’t
bother you as much.” After his passing, Anette says she began to question everything in life, from what friends she had, to why she painted her nails, “which I think was good because sometimes we do things by habit and sometimes we need a little shake-up.” “Because I lived so closely with death, I learned to appreciate life.” Today the most important values in her life are joy, truth, and love. Anette moved to the United States nine months after the passing of Martin in 2008. She needed to recharge her batteries before she started the new chapter in her life. She had identified herself as being Martin’s mother for the last 17 years, she said, and she needed to discover who she was and would be for the rest of her life. As she settled into her new life in the United States, she began working on a book to document Martin’s story. It was a way of keeping him alive, she said. “I love writing and it was a good way for me to get it out of my system. It was also a very healing
process to write it,” she said. Anette’s novel is more than a story of life and death. She describes the lessons she learned from her experiences, her grieving process, when food seemed to be the only escape from her emotions, reaching a consolation with the doctor who delivered her son, and her journey to become a new being. “I think the key lesson is that we all experience things in life that are difficult. It is how we deal with it that really sends the message of who we are as a person,” said Anette. If you are interested learning more about Anette’s journey, copies of “A Gift of Love — A Journey of Courage and Powerful Transformation” are available at www.anetteurban.com.