GILROY—To a stranger, Stefani Miller and her three children look ready for Christmas. The family’s tree is decorated and their stockings all hung with care—even Peanut’s, the family dog. But the gingerbread houses and peppermint bark serve as a distraction from the ever-present reminder that this Christmas won’t be like years past.
On Sept. 30, Miller thought her husband, Greg, suffered a heart attack. He refused to go to the hospital, however, and assured his wife he’d go after he rested and felt better. Two days later, at 5:45 a.m., Oct. 1, Stefani found her husband dead on their bedroom floor. Greg had bled out from an aortic aneurysm at the age of 43. While Greg had aneurysms on a bundle of arteries near his pelvis, Stefani said doctors were unaware of one in his heart.
The loss of her husband and father to her children—Shiloh 17, Justin 15 and Shoko, 6—took an immeasurable toll on the family, one that grows larger the closer the holidays get.
“It would be nice to give them a Christmas that’ll be magical and super-distracting because it is going to be so sad,” Stefani said. “I don’t know how you do that—we need miracles.”
Greg’s sudden passing left the family unprepared in more ways than one. Stefani, who supported the family working two jobs, seven days a week, was placed on leave at work just a week after her husband’s death. With no life insurance and survival benefits, and with Social Security and unemployment slow to come in, the purse strings of a family already living modestly tightened even more. And it’s placed an even bigger burden on a mother who wants to provide her children when some semblance of normalcy for Christmas.
“This year it’s going to be very difficult; I don’t want to do it,” Stefani said. “Thanksgiving was very difficult. Justin’s birthday (Dec. 11) was incredibly difficult. I’m almost dreading to see what Christmas will be like. I just wish he were here.
“Financially, I can’t even think about it. It’s not even possible to do it. I just want to run away.”
Their wishes are simple. For Shiloh, she wants new clothes or money to put toward college applications—she has one with a fee as high as $260. Justin is in need of a new laptop for his studies and Shoko loves anything to do with princesses—especially designing their clothes. As for Peanut, he’s happy with dog toys.
But beyond the presents under the tree, what the Millers really want is to continue their Christmas traditions. Shiloh and Justin are used to getting up before the sun to wake their parents to open presents, but are finding holiday cheer hard to come by without their dad around. In fact, they are finding it hard to do much of anything—and understandably so.
Greg was a stay-at-home dad, deeply involved in all aspects of his children’s lives. Having lost his own father at 17—which prevented him from graduating high school or attending college—he stressed the importance of education to his children. Shiloh, a senior at Gilroy High School, always rose to her father’s challenges and maintained above a 4.0 GPA. The death of her father paralyzed her to the point at which attending school wasn’t an option.
Now, Shiloh is struggling to catch up on schoolwork, but doing so—especially for five Advanced Placement classes—has become a tall order for her to fill. Though she’s put on a brave face and attempted the workload, she said she’s feeling crushed by the weight of sadness and stress.
“It’s almost like I have no legs and all I have are my arms now—and they’re slowly falling off. I don’t know how this is going to go,” Shiloh said. “My dad trained me to be a fighter. I’m like ‘I need to be able to do this. Why aren’t I doing this? I’m so stupid for not being able to do this’, but really it’s just that things are too much now.”
Things are just as hard for Justin, who said reality didn’t really set in for him until after his dad’s funeral. Since then, the usually stellar student’s grades have plummeted and he even contemplated taking the semester off.
“It’s just been really hard. I stopped kind of functioning after a while. I got my teachers to give me a free pass because I had missed so much school. There would be days where I just couldn’t get up,” Justin said. “None of it (school) seemed relevant anymore. It’s like why do I have to suffer and watch all of these kids be completely fine? When I went after (my dad’s death) and tried to be strong, half of it was shock and half of it was me not coping with my emotions. … It was like a slow tumble down hill until I realized I wanted to leave and quit, but I was convinced to stay.”
Emotionally, things have been just as tough on Stefani. For the first time in her 25-year marriage, Stefani found herself alone. Overnight she went from the parent working outside the home to assuming both roles, all while dealing with her own grief. She’s adjusted her sleep cycle so that she sleeps while the kids are at school and even Shoko has begun rooming with her mom to help fill the empty space in her parents’ bed.
“He was larger than life—a big ol’ teddy bear. He’s passionate, articulate, he’d do anything for anybody—everything for us,” Stefani said. “We were not one of those couples that needed couple time; we wanted family time. It makes it very difficult. It’s like trying to get out of bed and stepping down on the floor and realizing your left leg is gone. How do you walk?”
Things have even been hard for Peanut, whose demeanor has changed drastically since his owner’s passing. Stefani said Peanut will often lay in the spot where Greg passed and cry uncontrollably.
“There’s times when I’ll go in the room and he’s really whimpering and crying. It’s just inconsolable,” she said.
Stefani said she’s hoping a new year and new semester will equal a clean slate for her family to get their lives back on track. She wants her children to go to college and for life to continue as planned.
“I want what we wanted for them to happen,” Stefani said. “I don’t want this to be a defining thing that changes that outcome.”
Down the road, the Miller family wants to advocate for more information and better testing for aneurysms. Their tragedy, Stefani said, could have been prevented had a full body scan been performed on Greg and alerted doctors of the aortic aneurysm sooner.
“It’s so senseless; it didn’t need to happen,” Stefani said. “He was 43 years old. He was under the care of his doctors, so it really didn’t need to happen. I just want us to live out what our life plan was. We’re down one, but that doesn’t mean we’re out. I just don’t know how we’re going to do it yet.”
Those looking to help the Millers achieve their holiday dreams can do so by donating to Greg Miller’s memorial fund here.
The family can be reached via email at th*************************@gm***.com.
