When Tomorrow Starts Without Me

Most people who have lost a child write books about how to cope with the child’s death. Author Lori Plegge has taken a different perspective on losing a child. Instead of writing about how to cope with the death of a child, she has decided to write a story about her son’s life. When Tomorrow Starts Without Me is a true story about the life and death of a young man named Anthony. No matter how hard Lori tried to raise Anthony right, he made some bad choices in his life and those bad choices led to his death. When reading this book you will experience happiness, sadness, and anger. You become a part of the story so when Lori loses her son it is if you are losing him as well.

Lori describes the loss of a child as an indescribable pain, a pain that makes it difficult to move on with life. She says Neugeboren best describes this pain in a quote “A wife who loses a husband is called a widow. A husband who loses a wife is called a widower. A child who loses his parents is called an orphan. But...there is no word for a parent who loses a child, that's how awful the loss is!” - Neugeboren 1976, 154.

Lori, Anthony’s mother, is writing this book because she wants to share her son’s story with others. She hopes her story will help other parents who have lost a child realize they are not going through this alone. She also wants them to realize that even though something terrible has happened they can make something positive from their loss and help others that are going through the same thing. She says if When Tomorrow Starts Without Me helps just one parent realize what they are experiencing is normal or stops just one child from making the same mistakes her son did, then her story has served its purpose.