The Loss of My Two Sons - The Story of How It Happened Through My Eyes and How Tragedy Can Strengthen Your Marriage

Theo McManigal shares the story of the tragic loss of his two sons and how this taught him how tragedy can strengthen marriages if the graces it offers are cooperated with. A good and loving marriage can survive and even grow stronger through any of life's difficulties, and the way mine has sustained me through these tragedies is a big part of why I am passionate about serving married couples.

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One of the reasons I am so passionate about serving marriages and families is because I am passionate about my own marriage. While we will only be celebrating five years of marriage on May 1, 2026, we have been through an awful lot in this short time, but thankfully, the grace of the sacrament of matrimony and the strength of our marriage relationship has been a tremendous source of strength through it all. In these five years of marriage, we have given birth to three children. Unfortunately, two of them have since passed away. We have a 4-year-old daughter. We also have two sons, and they each passed away. Here is their story.

Our first son, Teddy, was born on October 20, 2022. He was a sweet boy, and smiled a lot. Early on, he always had a difficult time falling asleep. He loved his parents and his sister. His favorite word was apple, and he was getting the hang of saying some words. He was always enamored by the icons in the Byzantine Church that we attend, and the way he looked at them regularly was observed very early on by a fellow parishioner. Teddy often stared at the icon on of Christ painted on the ceiling. It was moving to see how moved he was by the beauty of our church. He even once had a moment of making the entire congregation laugh during the homily.

At some point, we began to notice a lump forming on his left side just under his collarbone. We were not sure what to make of it at first, and doctors took a somewhat conservative approach to it, seeming not to want to jump to worst case scenarios. However, one day, I received a text from my wife saying that she was in the emergency room with Teddy and I needed to get there as quick as I could.  I was a high school teacher at the time, so I left in the middle of my class after I got coverage, and that is where I learned that we got some imaging done for him, and it was revealed that flowing from the lump was a large growth going down his chest and pushing on his lung. This would lead to a long time of waiting for test results. We ended up transferring hospitals while waiting. Shortly after transferring to Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, we finally received a diagnosis - after waiting and praying for 13 long, difficult days. They diagnosed him with a rhabdoid tumor, which is a rare and aggressive form of childhood cancer. We prayed day and night for Teddy to be cured. We prayed the Byzantine Daily office several times per day, along with many rosaries and chaplets. I reached out to every priest I knew and asked them to pray and celebrate Holy Masses and Divine Liturgies for Teddy and for our family. Teddy received confirmation and he also received the Eucharist a few times. He had a shunt put in his brain. He spent time in a breathing tube, which he was able to come off of for some time. He received several rounds of chemotherapy. In the midst of all of the prayers we would say and the icons we had in our hospital room, the hospital staff often commented how our room felt peaceful, and how the love my wife and I have for each other was something they could clearly sense and had a positive impact on them, too. One crazy thing that happened at this hospital was that at one point, the computer system ended up getting shut down, apparently because of a cyberattack. One day, though, after Teddy had received chemotherapy for some time, we got some imaging done which showed us that despite the fact that the lump seemed to be getting smaller, the cancer had spread and the chemotherapy was not working. It became clear that he would either be miraculously cured, or he would die. On February 11, 2024, unfortunately he died. He passed away in my arms. He often fell asleep in my arms, and on this day, he fell asleep in my arms for the last time. Our prayers for him to miraculously be cured and live a long life on earth were not answered in the affirmative. On February 17, 2024, the date of his funeral, he was laid to rest. My pastor, Fr. Thomas Loya, often says that a person’s death will sometimes come about in a way where we can see “God’s wink”, so that we know he is close to us. Sometimes this is evident when the date of the death and/or the funeral seems fitting. In Teddy’s case, he died on the memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, which is also the World Day of the Sick. Through his death, he was healed of his cancer and suffering. Coincidentally, I mention for the benefit of this apostolate that it was also World Marriage Day that year. In light of that, I count on his prayers for this apostolate and my work serving marriage and family in the Church. That day was also the beginning of Lent in our Byzantine Church, and his death was a message for us all to repent and turn back to God. Finally, his funeral on February 17 turned out to be the same date as the Byzantine feast of the Holy Great Martyr St. Theodore the Recruit. As painful as it all was, God was present with us.

After Teddy’s passing, I never did return to my teaching job, except to join my fellow teachers one last time for the end of the year staff meetings. I decided during this time that I was ready to leave classroom teaching so that I could find a job that would allow me to work from home and be more regularly present with my wife and daughter. In the meantime, alongside looking for jobs, I spent some time traveling with my wife and other family members. I was able to go to Nashville, Tennessee for a weekend with my wife and her brothers and their wives. I also went with my wife, daughter, and my wife’s parents to Galena, Illinois for a few days. I was able to get away for a week with my wife and have a honeymoon. My wife and I also went to Los Angeles, where we visited my wife’s good friend and we also all went to Disneyland. After all of these travels, I got connected with the job I hold now at Covenant Eyes as the Catholic Church Outreach Specialist, which I love. About a year after beginning my job there, I also found my role here at the Apostolate for Marital Intimacy.

About four months into my job at Covenant Eyes, on Halloween of 2024, my wife and I discovered that we were pregnant again. We were very excited about this. One thing that became difficult early on is that my wife was experiencing some allergic reactions that were not typical of her - particularly red and itchy skin. We were able to get that taken care of, but due to my own googling of symptoms, I began to wonder and fear if something would happen to this baby, too. Eventually, I was able to put this fear aside, because losing one child is highly unlikely in the first place, so statistically, we were extremely unlikely to lose another one, right? My wife learned to live with the early symptoms, as they were inconvenient but not serious, and they may have even cleared up, though memory evades me on this. At our first pregnancy doctor visit, we realized our initial take on how far along the baby was in the pregnancy was about four weeks short. We had been pregnant for four weeks longer than we realized. This, and along with an initial ultrasound showing a very active baby were the primary significant realizations to come from the first doctor appointment. 

As the first half of the pregnancy progressed, naturally we grew in our excitement and our anticipation of whether it would be a boy or girl. We also got excited because our petition to formally transfer our canonical ascription from the Latin Church to the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church had been accepted, and this happened much more quickly than we anticipated. We were grateful and even more excited because since this happened, we would plan to have our new baby baptized at the Byzantine Church, and this baby would receive the sacraments of Chysmation (Confirmation) and first Eucharist immediately during the same liturgy, which is the Eastern practice. Further, we would plan to have our daughter, who was baptized in the Latin rite but had not yet received confirmation and first Eucharist, receive those sacraments along with her newborn sibling on the same day. We were very excited!

We showed up for the 20-week ultrasound with much anticipation and excitement. This is where we would be able to find out if it was a boy or girl. We showed up to the hospital for the ultrasound, and the technician who took the ultrasound was very kind and talkative. We had shared some of our story with her, especially about our son Teddy and what happened to him. We had enjoyed some early conversation before the ultrasound started. Then the conversation mostly stopped, and we began the ultrasound. We went through it with occasional comments here and there. However, at the very end, there was a shift in her demeanor. She got quiet, and at the very end, said, “I will go get the doctor”, and left the room without making eye contact. My wife and I were confused, and she pointed out that we have never had that happen before, and we began to wonder if she had seen something problematic, but we did not jump to any conclusions yet. Then the doctor came in, took a look at the ultrasound himself, and asked us how the pregnancy had been going. Then he dropped the news: the baby’s brain had not fully formed. There was darkness in the ultrasound, which was fluid, where more brain material was supposed to be. The condition is called “holoprosencephaly”. He informed us that this could be fatal. I glossed over, and we were both devastated and shocked. We could not believe it was happening again. Once I realized I got the point, I somewhat glossed over. We proceeded to meet with a genetic counselor immediately after the ultrasound. I do not remember that conversation. One thing I credit the doctor with is proposing that we get a second opinion, which we did. We went to a hospital connected to a university for a day of imaging, a long ultrasound, and other testing and consultation. After that day, the doctors we saw then confirmed what the first doctor's ultrasound had shown us. The 20-week ultrasound had also confirmed that the baby was a boy. So we would have the second half of the pregnancy to pray for a miracle while also suffering the anticipation of losing another son, along with being on alert for the possibility of a miscarriage or going into early labor at any point after the 20-week mark. This was a special kind of suffering. Further, the emotional and spiritual pain of losing our first son already, after praying so hard for him to get better, and God saying “no” left me spiritually depleted and made it difficult to pray and get my hopes up for a miracle this time. We remained faithful to the teachings of the Catholic faith, though. While plenty of people have aborted their children when they are diagnosed in the womb with conditions like this, this was not even remotely a consideration for us. While it is a decision we both stand by, and the right thing to do, I still see my wife as a hero for this - alongside many, many other reasons. 

At a certain point, I accepted what would happen to our son, and I began to worry more about what would happen to my wife because of this. It is possible to die from a broken heart, and tremendous amounts of grief and stress can cause health problems. Further, we knew the condition would likely be fatal, but it was not clear at what point. Would he die before or during birth? If he lived through the birth how long would he live? Would he live for an hour, a day, a week, or even a month? Any of those outcomes were possible. Would he have significant facial deformities? Holoprosencephaly can cause deformities of various kinds. Would I be able to handle it? Would my wife have to have a C-section? There was a lot on my mind. I was already someone who had a tendency to catastrophize before I even met my wife, let alone before I even lost a child. It was a lot to consider and it was hard to trust God, but I did my best with that. 

Eventually, we went to an ultrasound shortly before the day we were scheduled to have a C-Section if necessary, and the ultrasound showed that his head was down. The doctor recommended from this that my wife be induced that day. We took his advice and went in that night for the induction process. It took a day and a half, and after a long labor, our son, Santino Diego McManigal was born. It was not clear that he was alive, and he did have some deformities, but they detected a heartbeat, so I baptized him immediately. He was pronounced dead between 30 minutes and 1 hour later. Santino was born into this world, baptized, and born into eternal life, where he would join his brother Teddy,  on June 7, 2025, which that year was the Fifth All Souls Saturday in the Byzantine Catholic Church and the day before Pentecost. The Fifth All Souls Saturday is the day that the Byzantine Church prays for all of the deceased everywhere, so it was a fitting day for Santino and Teddy to be united. Due to some travel on the part of my pastor, we had to delay his funeral by a week, which led to us having the funeral on June 24, the Feast of the Birth of St. John the Baptist, celebrated by the Catholic Church on that day both in the East and the West. This was an incredibly fitting day to have his funeral. St. John the Baptist was a witness to life in the womb when he kicked for joy in the womb of his mother in the presence of Mary and Jesus in her womb. Further, it was on the Feast of St. John the Baptist three years prior that Roe V. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States. By carrying Santino to term despite his diagnosis, my wife was an incredible witness to the sanctity of life in the womb. Also, my wife shared with me that sometimes, during the Divine Liturgy, Santino, while in the womb, would kick and move in a way similar to St. John the Baptist in the womb in the presence of Our Lord and Our Lady. This is even more astonishing because his birth revealed that he did not have ears, so perhaps he was granted a way of spiritually hearing the chanting of the Divine Liturgy. Another significant tradition of the Byzantine Catholic Church on the Feast of the Birth of St. John the Baptist is that it is common after the Divine Liturgy of the day to have a bonfire, during which fireflies will come out, which our church refers to as “St. John’s Bugs”. Those bugs will always remind me of Santino now, and I can see them as a reminder of his presence with Our Lord and his brother Teddy in heaven, as well as their presence here with me, my wife, and our daughter here on Earth. In the pain of it all, God’s wink, and His presence, were with us through this, too.

We still grieve the loss of both of our boys and we miss them every day. I am dedicated to turning the pain and suffering of these losses into a gift for the betterment of other people. Through my work at Covenant Eyes and here at the Apostolate for Marital Intimacy, I have and am grateful for the opportunity to help married couples and families. Losing our boys has been extremely difficult, but having a strong marriage with my wife has been key in living through all of this, and it proves in my mind that a faithful and loving married couple can get through anything together. We still grieve. We are still investingating our health, and trying to see if there is anything pertaining to our health that may have contributed to what happened. We continue to maintain and practice our faith in Our Lord and His Church, even if it is hard to trust sometimes. We hope and pray someday to have more healthy children. In the meantime, our marriage has grown even closer in this trial, and it remains one of the primary ways I hope I, and my wife and I together can be of benefit to everyone in our lives, including everyone reading this and all who benefit from our Apostolate. In a future article, I plan to share some of the lessons I learned from losing my two sons, and I hope they are of benefit to the readers, as I hope the sharing of this experience has been. 

From the Byzantine Rite of Christian Burial of a Child

Who would not mourn, O my child, your sad departure from this life too soon? Still a child, you have flown like a sparrow from your mother’s arms and sought refuge with the Creator of all. Who, then, would not mourn, child, * when they see your face already faded, * once as delightful as a rose?

Who would not sigh, O my child, and cry out mourning your great charm and the beauty of your pure life?  Like a ship which leaves no wake you have slipped away so quickly from my sight. Come join me my friends, relatives, and neighbors, let us bid them farewell and consign (him-her) to the grave.

Death is release for children for they have been untouched by the evils of life. They attained their reward and heavenly joy. They are happy in the bosom of Abraham and now rejoice along with the divine choirs of holy children. They dance in faith because they have departed innocent of the corruption of sin.

O blessed and ever-memorable children Teddy and Santino, may you be remembered forever.