Linda Dahlstrom decided she wouldn't take her husband Michael’s last name when they married. “Mrs. Michael Anderson” ?seemed like a fictional character to her: well groomed, a good cook, ?the classic ?June Cleaver. Dahlstrom did not feel like June Cleaver. In fact, she felt like the same person she was before she was married. So she decided to keep things as they were.
They had a son, a bubbly, loving baby boy named Phoenix Anderson. Then seven months after he was born Phoenix began breathing abnormally in his crib. His parents rushed him to the hospital, and hours later Phoenix passed away from bacterial meningitis.
Linda's mourning was deep and blinding. She hallucinated her son’s crying and slept with his clothes, trying to connect with him any way she could. In the end it was visiting his grave, and seeing her son’s name written on it, that drove home the name’s significance. That experience nudged her toward making a change that she never thought she would make. She told host Gabriel Spitzer about it, and about why hearing the name of her child is still like “a rare gift.”
