On the day after Mother’s Day, Tess Scanlon-Phillips knew it was time.
She knew her 4-month-old son, Cash, would die that day.
“The doctors said it would happen fast, and then the machines he was hooked up to started slowing down,” she recalled, crying. “We just looked at each other and said, ‘It’s happening.’ Cash died in my arms.”
From the moment of their son’s death, Tess and her husband, Page, knew they wanted to build the Cash Scanlon Phillips Healing Garden.
The two have been raising money for a 900-square-foot garden that will be on the grounds of the new Children’s Hospital, and a benefit concert will be held at the Oriental Theater on Cash’s birthday, Jan. 18.
“When Tess approached me about playing the show, I was like, ‘Absolutely,’ ” said Martin Gilmore, whose bluegrass band, Long Road Home, will take the stage along with the Railbenders. “This is a good cause, and a very sad story.”
Cash — named after Cassius Clay, who is better known as Muhammad Ali — was born with Type 1 spinal muscular atrophy.
Tess and Page are both carriers of the rare genetic disorder that inhibits communication to the body’s muscles because of a lack of motor neurons.
“Beauty. Serenity. That’s our vision,” Page said. “Part of our experience at the hospital was to get outside, but we couldn’t find a spot where we could just be a family.”
Instead, the family lived in a hospital room where Tess and Page told Cash stories of their college days so he would know his parents. Also, they read him books and sang him the Beatles’ song “Blackbird” every night for two weeks.
The day after “Cashie” died, Tess and Page began researching what it would take to realize the garden, and the two found themselves — one month to the day after their son’s death — in the office of Holly Anderson, the donor-relations director for the Children’s Hospital Foundation.
Since that first meeting, the memorial fund Anderson helped them establish has raised more than $22,000 of the $30,000 needed to begin construction on the garden, the director said.
“Everything with the timing of the project has been amazing. I mean, everything has fallen into place,” Anderson said. “I think the placement of the garden is very fitting as well.”
Cash’s garden will be part of a larger memorial garden already on the hospital grounds. The garden is dedicated to Caroline Rickenbaugh, a volunteer who also lost a child at the hospital, Anderson said.
The new garden will be intimate, Page said, with benches and a “flood of flowers,” including a particular tulip from a grower in Holland who picked the flower especially for the Phillipses.
Tess, a self-employed landscape designer, has overseen most of the planning of the garden and said the project has been a therapeutic experience in dealing with the grief of her son’s death.
“It’s quite a miracle that I was able to get out of bed every day,” Tess said. “But it’s simple: I need to get up for my son.”
Cassie Hewlings: 303-954-1638 or chewlings@denverpost.com
How to help “Cashie”
Donations can be made to: The Children’s Hospital Foundation, Attn. Holly Anderson, 13123 E. 16th Ave., B045, Aurora CO 80045.
Tickets for the Jan. 18 benefit concert are $20. For tickets, call 303-550-4310 or go to .
