“Your heart breaks and then it breaks and you wonder how many times it can continue to break,” Randy Erickson said.
After many trips to Mayo Clinic, the Ericksons lost Silas to cancer in December of 2007. Sunday, they raised money for a place to help families, just like theirs by promoting ‘Cy’s Place’.
“If they need to talk about it, we’ll be there and we know what it’s like,” Erickson said.
It will be a place for people thrown into an uncertain and stressful time while their child is waiting to receive an organ transplant.
“If we could help at least take this part of that, they have a place to stay and it’s cheap just $10, if we could do that for them, it would take a lot of burden off of them,” Erickson said.
Some of the Erickson’s church friends stepped in to help after Randy Erickson gave a presentation in a Sunday school class.
“It was in my mind for maybe two or three weeks, we’ve just [have to] do it,” family friend Boyd Brue said.
Brue also said nine acres of land has already been claimed, the family is just waiting for the funds.
“’Cy’s Place’ actually exists right now in their basement,” Brue said.
The Ericksons have been housing people who are going through the same experience they did years ago.
“And so after Silas died, we thought it’d be fun for us to someday move back to Rochester and give back to people,” Erickson said.
So the Erickson family and their friends are trying to show as much support as they can to those who need it.
“It’s been a lot of work but hopefully it’ll pay off,” Brue said.