One mom’s attempt to help her boy mourn his brother goes viral

PHOTO: COURTESY ASHLEE HAMMAC

A mother’s tribute to her deceased 5-day-old son – the addition of a sandbox to his grave, so her older boy could continue to play with his brother – has quickly gone viral on Facebook, with more than 220,000 users sharing her photo.

Ashlee Hammac, 24, says she originally planned to decorate the gravesite of her son Ryan with glass pebbles, but then realized her older son, Tucker, needed his own place to mourn.

“The more I thought about it, the more I wanted something my other son Tucker could be incorporated in,” Hammac told PEOPLE. “He always goes out there with me, and sits out there, and sings lullabies, and talks to him just like he was there. So I wanted it to be special for him too. His favorite thing right now is trucks.”

Hammac says Tucker has been cherishing these moments of interacting with his lost sibling, often asking his mother if he can go to “baby Ryan’s sandbox.”

After first posting a photo of Tucker playing in Ryan’s sandbox on March 2, Hammac said she has experienced an overwhelming outpouring of support from other mothers who have lost children. She says the virtual response has been particularly moving given her own difficulty in finding an outlet for her grief when Ryan passed away.

Ryan died five days after birth in October 2013 due to Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephlopathy, or HIE, a brain dysfunction that occurs when there is a lack of blood flow to the brain. Hammac and her family have now committed themselves to raising awareness of HIE through their new nonprofit Pages to Memories, an organization that donates supplies to neonatal intensive care units and provides emotional support to struggling families.

“I wanted to help. I wanted other people, because I know it wasn’t just me, to have someone to talk to to have a place they could depend on,” Hammac explained. “And I wanted to feel like Ryan was helping still, because in those five days he changed our family so much.”