Zach's story
"In March 2006, our 16 year old son, Zach, came home from school and went to his room to take a nap. About an hour later, he came downstairs and said that a bat, flying around his face, had woken him up.
We went upstairs, found the bat, put a towel over it and threw it out the window. We asked Zach if the bat had bitten him and he said he didn’t think so. We checked and there were no bite marks, nothing that we could see.
On May 5th, Zach came into our room at about 3 o’clock in the morning and said that there was something very wrong with him. Over the next 8 days we witnessed our child go through the horrors of rabies until he passed away on May 12th.
No words can describe what it was like to lose your only child. Zach was the light of our lives and we miss him more than can be imagined.
A day does not go by that we don’t think of him and also ask ourselves a very difficult question - “what if”? If we had known that bats could carry rabies, we would have captured the bat, had it tested and our precious son would be alive today. But, we didn’t know.
As parents, we saw first hand the horrors of rabies. We never want anyone to go through what we went through, losing our child to a disease which could have been prevented.
We made a solemn promise to ourselves that we were going to do everything in our power to educate the public about rabies because no child should have to go through what our son went through."
Written by Connie and Larry Jones.
Below are links to memorial videos for Zach
http://www.youtube.com/rabiesaware
http://www.youtube.com/rabiesaware#p/u/1/NKDmF81bnUQ
