11-year-old Josiah Miles died of a triple brain aneurysm on Sept. 28 after he collapsed following football training in Klein, Texas, on Sept. 24.
Parents Joshua and Monica Miles are still in shock after what started out as a regular training day for the school football team, the Klein Rams.
“It’s like a bad, bad, bad dream,” Monica Miles, said. “Any moment I just want to wake up. I just want to wake up.”
“He had a very pure heart, very pure,” Joshua Miles added. “Give the shirt off his back for you. If he saw a homeless (person) on the street, he’d say, ‘Hey Dad, give him $20.’ It wasn’t small bills.”
Everything started out like normal that Tuesday night when Joshua attended his son’s football training at the campus of Strack Intermediate School. The training was about to end when the coaches alarmed the father, “‘Joshua, Joshua, hurry up and come over. It’s Josiah.’ And I’m just thinking that maybe he had the wind knocked out. Anyways, practice was actually over. He went into a seizure and he was in shock mode.”
Josiah was rushed to Texas Children’s Hospital-The Woodlands and later transferred to Texas Children’s Hospital in the Medical Center. “(The doctors) kept thinking that maybe it had something to do with his heart,” Joshua Miles said. “What they started figuring out was that it had something to do with blood vessels in his brain.”
Josia’s aunt, De’Lana Carter started a GoFundMe initiative to help the family cover the costs of his funeral. She wrote: “On Tuesday, September 24th my vibrant healthy, 11-year-old nephew Josiah Miles collapsed on the football field after practice (this was NOT sports-related). Three blood vessels burst in his head and the doctors have not detected any brain activity so far. The doctor’s prognosis is bleak, but we serve a God who specializes in miracles and the impossible! Please pray for a miracle!!”
Josia was on life support, but he eventually died, Saturday, September 28. His parents made a most difficult decision.
“I could not imagine giving another parent the grief that we have if we did not do this,” Monica Miles said. “We have donated his organs: his heart, his lungs, his kidneys, everything that they could use organ-wise, so he will live on in someone else. He will be able to save their son or daughter or family members. He will be able to live on, especially his wonderful heart.”