Cash Scanlon Phillips lived to be only 4 months old, but during his short life he did a lot of hiking.
His parents, Tess Scanlon-Phillips and Page Phillips, carried him on walks through Jefferson County’s Open Space trails and Indian Peaks Wilderness Area. Cash, who was born with Type 1 Spinal Muscular Atrophy, died the day after Mother’s Day in 2007, and those hikes stood out in his mother’s mind.
“I think Cash really loved them,” she said. “Those were times that we really connected as a family.”
Those mountain trails were the inspiration for the Healing Garden dedicated Sunday at the Children’s Hospital in Aurora. The Phillipses raised more than $88,000 to build the garden, and Scanlon-Phillips, a landscape architect, designed it.
“My hope is that if someone is sitting here in the middle of Aurora, they can be transported to Indian Peak or another place in the mountains,” she said. “I want to give them emotional space from what is happening inside the hospital.”
Cash’s parents wished for that emotional space in the weeks before Cash died, when the family lived in a room at the hospital.
So they spent the past two years hosting benefit concerts and collecting donations to build one.
“This is one of those gardens you never want to have people see because that means they’re at a hospital,” Phillips said. “But we want to give families a place to escape the needles and all of the difficulties if they’re here.”
On Sunday, more than 70 people came from across the country to attend the garden’s dedication. Many wore blue T-shirts that read “Team Cash” and brought flowers or cards for the Phillipses. They stood among rocks collected from a quarry, white crab apple trees, mugho pines, lupines, delphiniums and other wild flowers, or sat on a stone bench dedicated to Cash.
During the ceremony, the Phillipses presented a check for $7,834 to the hospital’s Bereavement Program.
Phillips said he and his wife will continue to hold annual concerts to benefit the Bereavement Program. They also plan to return to the garden regularly to care for the plants and think about Cash.
“This could be deemed a tragedy by people, but we’re not going to let it be a tragedy,” Phillips said. “We’re trying to be positive, to make something bad into something good.”
Claire Trageser: 303-954-1638 or ctrageser@denverpost.com
