Abigail Young/TikTok
A lot can change over the course of a year — something no one knows better than Abigail Young.
“We chatted back and forth for a while, going from the app to texts to social media. After a few weeks, we planned a date,” she tells PEOPLE.
Chad, a student at UT Chatanooga, invited Abigail to visit campus. She took a chance on the hour-and-a-half-long journey.
“I was so nervous the whole way because I hadn’t met him in person before, but I was really excited because of our conversations leading up until then. I knew he was going to be an amazing person.”
“One of the things that he said that he wanted was he wanted to have children,” she explains, citing his difficult upbringing and desire for those bonds.
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“He said, ‘I spent the last 20-few years of my life alone. I’ve done nothing but work and I think that it’s time for me to get my life started and I want to share that with you,'” she shares, noting the two decided to start trying from there.
“I got a message from Chad’s mom that said, ‘Please call me,’ " she recalls. By the time she’d called back, his father answered and delivered devastating news on July 27.
“At first he said [Chad’s mom] was having trouble breathing, so I thought they were calling me for medical advice, which family members sometimes do since I’m an EMT,” she says. “And before I can say anything, he tells me, ‘Chad is dead.'”
“I was trying to rationalize what I had been told and I just fell to the floor. I couldn’t believe this man that promised me the world just days before was no longer here,” she says, noting she immediately called her family for support.
“My mom said, ‘Honey, I think you need to take a pregnancy test,’ " she says. “And I told her, ‘I don’t know if I’m ready to do that.'”
“I was also happy to have a piece of him to carry with me forever, but devastated he wasn’t there to share it with me,” she says.
“I can’t contain my tears and Brandy starts crying because it’s so close to Chad’s birthday. I don’t know how to explain the intensity of that date, being so significant. But it was crazy to the both of us.”
“I had tachycardia. My heart was beating 174 beats per minute, which is really dangerous. And so my lieutenant calls my shift commander and he says that I don’t have a choice, I need to go to the hospital immediately.”
“They put a heart monitor on me and gave me fluids and checked on CJ. CJ was doing fine and my heart rate came down, so they sent me home, but I was still super worried about CJ’s condition. I scheduled an early appointment with my OB for a checkup and to tell her everything that was going on.”
During the exam, the nurse struggled to find CJ’s heartbeat.
The ultrasound confirmed that CJ no longer had a heart beat. “And so my doctor comes in and tells me, because of everything you’ve been through and how far along you are, we want to induce a natural birth so that when you deliver CJ, he will be intact,” she tearfully recalls. “You’re able to take him home and have him buried with Chad.”
“We got to the hospital and they checked me in. They put this monitor on me to check the contractions as my family calls Chad’s family for everyone to get to the hospital. Then they say I’m probably not going to deliver for a while, so everybody goes home.”
“The next day, the contractions started again, but they said that in order for me to have an epidural, I couldn’t eat for however long and I didn’t want to go into labor on an empty stomach. So they gave me breakfast and waited hours, at which point the rest of my and Chad’s family showed up and they gave me the epidural.”
“My heart breaks again because I know that I can’t take him home, and I can’t hear him cry. I know I’m not gonna change his diapers or kiss his boo-boos or take him to school for the first time. I felt this new grief that I never experienced before as I tried to accept that this is my reality and it is so hard.”
Today, she admits that she “still doesn’t know exactly where I’m going with everything.”
“I noticed that my views had gotten up to about 200,000 on the video of the announcement that I posted and I realized that all of these people were following my story. I felt like I needed to catch everybody up to date on what had happened,” she says.
“I got condolences and I got a lot of women relating to my story, which really stood out to me. Knowing that there are so many women out there who have had to deal with significant loss at a young age, it kind of gave me a will to keep going.”
“It makes me feel less alone, but it’s also devastating because it’s not something that you’d want anybody to go through. I wouldn’t wish this type of grief on my worst enemy. It’s also reassuring and sometimes it can be validating because it is such a lonely, lonely journey. No matter how many people you’ve lost, until you experience a loss like this, losing a significant other and a child, it’s hard to relate.
“I’m doing everything I can to keep Chad’s legacy alive and to keep CJ’s legacy alive. And I hope that this reaches people who need it, so they can have somebody they relate to. I want to bring awareness that these types of tragedies don’t always happen to people later in life and that it can happen to anybody.”
“Life is short and you need to live it to the fullest,” she adds. “I’m grateful that I had the opportunity with Chad and had an emotionally fulfilling relationship with him to keep me get to where I am right now. There was so much love and happiness and joy that came out of this and I will always be able to cherish that no matter where I’m at in life or what I’m doing.”
source: people.com
