On December 17, 2010, my life was changed dramatically.  In the blink of an eye, my beautiful 16 year old daughter, Rayna Nicole Guzman, was tragically killed in a car accident on 51st and Coulter the first day of Christmas break.  That day is a day that is forever embedded in my heart, a day that forever changed my family’s life.  Before Hope & Healing, I felt lost, I felt like I was alone.  I isolated myself and I felt like an outcast, because I thought no one had experienced what I had, the loss of a child.  This has been the hardest experience of my life and I truly believe without the help of Hope & Healing I would not be here today.

I first learned of Hope & Healing through a counselor I had been seeing at NWTH.  I realized that in order for me and my children to get thru everyday life that we needed help and the name of Hope & Healing gave me hope that we could be healed as a family.

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If the party had not yet begun when Cody arrived, it would be swinging and singing within five minutes of his appearance.  With his easy smile and ability to craft lyric and melody on request, playing the guitar that went everywhere with him, my son Cody was the life of the party.  He lived the proverbial “every day of his life as if it was his last”, towing the rest of us right along in his wake.  But our life of the party departed the party at 1:19 a.m., Saturday, March 15, 2008, when he died, one week before he was to be married to the girl he loved, three weeks before his 21st birthday, six months before his son was born, the passenger in a one-vehicle accident.

Cody was a larger-than-life kind of guy.  You know the type.  He didn’t just walk into a room – he owned it; he took up all the space and air in it with nothing more than only the sheer force and size of his personality.  He was a poet, prankster, lyricist, artist, redneck, musician, rebel, story teller and lover of a good time and of people.  Cody had a gift for giving of himself and for drawing people close to him, if for no other reason than to see what would happen next.  He was the luminary in our family.  His younger sister idolized him; his friends called him their own brother and son; his Navy chiefs called him “Rock Star”.  When we lost him, his friends from coast to coast, border to border, even overseas, shared with me how Cody had made their worlds, even Iraq, a bearable place to be, with his guitar (that guitar that went everywhere), songs, jokes and stories.  The story I had anticipated to be at its beginning was abruptly ended, shocking, searing, in one stunning phone call from the DPS, and one unbelievable sight of the men in Navy dress blues approaching me.

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