This documentary short film tells the story of Megan and Mitchell, chronicling their relationship from their first meeting in fourth grade through their marriage and the tragic loss of their son, Sage Jo. It explores how they navigated grief and found a way to honor Sage's memory by starting a business that preserves flowers, ultimately finding healing and purpose in helping others.
I can provide the transcript with the dialogue. However, as an AI, I cannot "see" the video to describe the visuals. My capabilities are limited to processing the text-based information provided in the transcript.
Here is the dialogue from the transcript:
"People don't talk to me about it anymore, which I understand, but I wish people would. Like, they think they want to tiptoe around the situation. And I'd rather talk about him. Okay. I'm almost thinking lose this. This one's might be cuter than that one. Yeah, that's what I was looking at, too. I don't like the center of that bell. Yours. I know. Do we have We could put this over top. out. Sometimes I really struggle and he helps me like figure it out. Yeah, the bigger pieces can be challenging. They take two brains sometimes. Or I'll build it and then I won't like a certain thing about it and he'll work on it again another day. Teamwork makes the dream work. Hey, I just discovered a journal that I wrote in fourth grade. Dear Mitchell, I think you are really cute. When you moved classes, I was mad. I was sad. I think it would be cool if you liked me, too. I think you're the cutest boy in the whole school, and I hope to be your girlfriend one day. You're really cute, and you always look like you're having lots of fun when we go outside. I hope we can at least be friends. If I'm not your girlfriend, you're cool. Love, Megan. I was just a little free spirit. I was my family always says I was just beaten to my own drum. We met in fourth grade and I was a new kid so I was getting bullied and stuff and he was a cute new boy. There was something about this girl. She did this weird thing where she'd burp in my face and I was like you know she's got some spunk. We locked eyes in fourth grade and didn't get together until 8th. I was hanging out with some friends and they were like, we should get boyfriends. And I was like, I think Mitchell's kind of cute. And I sent him a text and I was like, hey, I think you're cute. And then literally he was like, okay. And it just like happened from there. Once we got into high school, we had a class together every single year. even if we didn't want to be together, the universe was like, "No, he keep them close." So, like we were on and off throughout all of high school, you know, the typical story. But we always just went back to each other. And I think that's what made us stronger. And then once we got into college, we just like really had the big conversation about all those things. I claimed that she was the love of my life. And here we are now. We've been together solidly ever since. It was the day of my mom's wedding. And so I was a little superstitious about it, but asked her, I was like, "Hey, would it be weird if I did this at your wedding? Like me would have no idea that I would propose to you cuz it's like taboo. Like you don't take away the moment from someone else's." Uh, big day. That's what I thought. Hey, this is the only way that I can surprise her cuz her intuition is too strong. I'm giving him crap that day, too. She was giving me crap for years before that. Don't let her fool you. This was five years. She probably gave me crap for like 3 years before I actually did it because you waited forever. Hey, you cut you cut three times and or you measure three times and you cut once. We got married on August 18th, 2018. We were living in Colorado, flew back out to Michigan to be with our family. We wanted to have a very humble wedding. We weren't very big into the whole charade. And also, we were broke as a joke. We weren't trying to do the whole thing. We had a backyard wedding at his mom's house. We got blessed by the rain on that day and all that good stuff. And it was magical and so much fun and I loved it. It was just like the perfect day. So, we were in no rush. We're like, "Hey, let's let's fix up our home a bit. Let's maybe get financially right and then we can take that next step." Do you want them? No, I'll make I'll make it. Sage came before we even were discussing having kids. Like, we were like not even engaged. I don't think we were talking about kid names. Yeah, there was just one I really liked. The color associated with it, just how uh how soft it felt. I always knew I wanted to be a mom. He always knew he wanted to be a dad. When she first got pregnant, we certainly weren't ready or I didn't think I didn't think obviously you don't know what to do. You're never ready to be a dad or a mom. So, he was mowing the lawn. And she came out and I was halfway through and I'm very anal about, you know, finishing the lawn. And I just had this like gut feeling. I was like, I think I'm pregnant right now. like, "Okay, well, let's uh let's just go to the store and make sure get one, get a clear blue." And then when that we flipped the test the first time, he just started cracking up. We were just jumping for joy. The experience and everything, I was like happy about it. I was not scared. Like I did not have any fear the entire time. midwife process was just like it builds you up and you feel so strong in like an empowered person, an empowered woman and I was so excited to experience the home birth and that whole thing. I was like very much looking forward to that and unfortunately like I feel like that experience got like ripped away from me because I would never do it again. besides um you know some pains and whatnot through being pregnant, it wasn't the pregnancy wasn't the bad part and really the birthing wasn't the bad part either until the last 5 minutes. It was more at the very end. It was like a stuck situation and it was an immediate like flip on call 911. I started to write a book about it and I got about a paragraph in until I said probably not a good idea. But I do have that written. All right. So this is about the last 5 minutes. February 12th, 2021. The panic set in. Time not existing. Only the moment. Sirens blaring in the distance. Deep breath. Come on, baby. Your mom and dad are here. Come on. Time stopped completely. The moment is all we have. Get her in the ambulance. She has to go now. Come on, baby. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 You can do it. We're here, baby. 8 9 10 11 12 13 Just open your eyes. 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Scream. God damn it. Do something. 21 22 23 24 25 26 Just breathe. 27 28 29 30 off and that was the that was the last moment really. And um God, it just it kills me to think about and you can you can kind of see why I stopped writing it. Um cuz living through that is the hardest damn thing I've ever had to do. It just brings you to your knees. I don't think I like felt for a few days. I was just like living in this in this foggy light for a long time. Like I couldn't actually cry for a few days. Like it took me so long to actually process like the trauma. She's not going to be okay. And I knew that was going to be our biggest hurdle to get through this is like as a relationship is that she's not going to be okay. My thought wasn't even about Sage at that point. It was what am I going to do to make sure that she's okay. Mitchell was the best rock in the entire world. He validated me on a completely different level. like he has made me feel so safe. We don't want to be in this dark place cuz that's where you get sent. That's where we were sent right away like into the pits of hell. And what uh what really did it was having support for each other. And another sad part was all these flowers we received which was a beautiful thing. Um, but then they started to die, too. We got so many flowers because there's so many people in my life that literally just didn't know what to do and they started to get crispy and sad and I just like could not physically throw them away. It made me like it re brought up everything and like I felt like I was it was like the last piece of him. I was just like, I'm gonna order some frames and throw some flowers in there and hope for the best. I got like really I'm getting emotional right now. I got really emotional about it and I was really sad that they were dying. I posted about it on TikTok. I pressed them and I put them in these frames instead of it like being a sad thing now makes everybody really happy and it's really pretty. and someone commented on it just saying like, "You should do this for other people and start a business." And I was like, "Well, I would never start a business doing that. There's so many people doing that. There's no way I would be successful with it." But then I just kept like, it just kept coming into my head. I just kept thinking about it. And so what Megan did was just post it on Facebook and left it up to that and maybe someone will reach out. It didn't like fly at first for sure. I would just get like friends and family ordering from me and then Joan found me on Facebook and then she was my very first trial. You know, you latch on to some of the last things from your loved one. I was trying to decide how we could honor my dad and my dad was a very simple and humble man. I was on Facebook and I came across Megan's story and all I could think is, "Oh my gosh, we have all these flowers that are going to go to waste. My dad would be cringing right now." So, I contacted her and I said, "Listen, we would love for you to take all of these extra flowers that we have and give us something we can remember my dad by." So, when that came in and she ordered five frames, we were like freaking out cuz we still didn't know what the heck we were doing. But we just kind of let uh let our faith guide the way and and Joan entrusted us with that and the ember was there and she she built the fire. And then all of a sudden we were on a trip and my phone just kept going cha-ching cha-ching. I think it went off seven different times and I was like, "What is going on?" I was freaking out. We were thinking like, "Oh, wow." Like, "Maybe this is something here. Hey, maybe this will like pay a cell phone bill." Like something as small as that. We weren't even thinking, "Hey, maybe we can both quit this and go full-time and really be able to help thousands of people." So, it was about 3 months of that until we were both like, "We can do this together." I remember I was sitting on the computer and I was googling business names with Sage because I couldn't think of anything and one popped up and it said sincerely Sage and I was like what about sincerely Sage Co? you know people do co and Mitchell was like no do sincerely Sage Joe because his middle name is Joe and I was like that makes so much sense like because the things we send out is like from Sage and I just threw it up created a Facebook page created my Etsy shop and it just was from there. It's something that again you're like oh what what did you want to be when you grew up? Is this what you wanted to be? It's like no but this is where life has led me. That's what I think truly healed both of our hearts is doing this for other people. When everything else seems lost, there's there's a place you can go to to find light and that was ours. I love creating wedding bouques. It's amazing. I love it. It's so creative and fun. But when we get memorial pieces, they are always extra special to me because you know that it's going to be hanging in someone's home and they're looking at it loving and in memory of someone. I remember this specific one where we did a stillborn and I think she was like 32 weeks and had to birth a stillborn and all this stuff and the mom had sent me like her hat, her little bracelet, like all of these items in a bag with the flowers and she wanted me to incorporate all of them in the frame. And I just remember building that one specifically just like sobbing cuz it just was like such a full circle moment that I was at a position where I was helping someone else heal to be able to give them a piece that they can literally have for the rest of their life and passed down to their children and their children children. It's like it's such a cool thing and it's all because of Sage. It's all because of him. We waited 7 months after Sage to start trying for Sequoia and we got pregnant with him immediately. And she surprised me with this one. She didn't tell me she was pregnant and I was working 10 12 hour shifts at the time um just to get my mind off of Sage because it was still there. And um I came out of the bathroom. Go on. Go on, buddy. Go. Ready. For real. You're pregnant. Yes. And we did the experience entirely different cuz now I'm considered high risk. I was afraid the entire time. I was violently shaking and I remember one of the nurses was like, "Is she cold?" And my midwife was like, "No, she's terrified." All we wanted to do was hear our baby scream. Where some parents are like, "Oh, it's okay. Like, don't scream." It's like, "No, let me let me hear you. like let let it all out. You can touch him. You can touch his little I sobbed. I instantly as soon as I heard him cry, I just like violently sobbed. And as soon as he's on my chest, we both just like he's just goes silent. And I go silent. I was just so calm. I felt like so accomplished in that moment for sure. It was so beautiful. It was so beautiful just to see him and hold him. I can't even explain it. We're waiting for that moment for felt like forever. Koi doesn't really quite grasp the concept that he had an older brother or anything like that, but we talked to him about that, too. He just doesn't quite get it, but he knows his name and he knows who he was. So my dad has a ton of siblings. He comes from a family of nine and they all chipped in for a gift card for us to buy a tree. We immediately knew we wanted a catalpa because the leaves are shaped like giant hearts. And so that's the one we bought. So we just kept saying like, "Oh, it's going to bloom." And it never did. But the second time we did it, we actually decided to put his ashes um under the tree. And since then, this thing has like quadrupled in size. We uh yeah, put Sage's ashes on this tree and it they said it would grow anywhere from 1 to 3 ft in a year, and I think it's grown 12 feet in 2 years. So, I think it's doing something. It was like such a therapeutic moment to do that for sure cuz we didn't do any type of um memorial service or anything like that. It just didn't feel me. I wanted to more um plant trees and celebrate and flowers. So that's what we did. And that has been like such a it's such every time I look at that tree it makes me smile. Oh that one. Sincerely Sage Joe original. Yeah. Before Sincerely Sage Joe. Yeah, before I knew what I was doing, that's for sure. I think he's a part of our family every day. I don't People don't talk to me about it anymore really. Um, which I understand, but I wish people would more like they think they want to tiptoe around the situation and I'd rather talk about him. I think he's around everywhere I go. He's my little buddy. He may not be here, but he's the reason I still live. Looking up at a tree. I remember how it started. I was lost in a dream when the fire in my heart said an open rose. Oh, I've already found sunlight. The feeling grows. Oh, and anything sounds all right. I'm breaking loose. Living in the moment in my own balloon. This year I'm going to start a new chapter. Ignore the tears and only write down the laughter and open a rose. I've already found sunlight. The feeling grows and anything sounds all right. I'm breaking loose. Living in the moment in my own balloon."
