Space Between Breaths

by Rosemary Smith
Author/Filmmaker

Who are we? What really matters? Is it possible to find true happiness after a great loss? The answers to some of life’s most important questions are explored in Space Between Breaths, a powerful, uplifting film, which looks at the potential in grief and to the ways it can become a motivational, transformational force in our lives. Featuring conversations with parents who have lost a child, including those whose loved ones died at Columbine High School, on September 11th, and a mother whose son was one of the first U.S. soldiers to die in Iraq, Space Between Breaths offers an inspired and healing perspective on loss which will transform the way you live and love.

Tragically, my husband Luther and I lost our two oldest sons, Drew, age eighteen, and Jeremiah, age fifteen, in an automobile accident on July 23, 1992. Our third son Jordan was only eleven years old. Without warning, we went from a family of five to a shell of three. How were we going to survive?

Two weeks after our sons died, I received a grief workbook from a woman I did not know. Her name was Dinah Taylor. She and her husband had lost their only child, Jim, one year before. Knowing she was still standing after one year became my lifeline.

Why was I still alive while my sons were dead? Could I begin to heal by reaching out to other bereaved parents? That thought led me to call the first of what has been over five thousand families to try to help them cope with the immense pain of losing a child. Through authoring the book Children of the Dome, I was able to share the journeys of some of these remarkable families. Each new family I contacted received a bereavement packet comprised of my book, a CD by Cindy Bullens, a video and writings collected over a period of years.

After seeing Big Mama win the Academy Award for Documentary Short in 2001, I had a revelation. I would film a documentary on a subject no one had ever explored, the loss of a child. Six years later, my documentary premiered at the historic Kentucky Theatre in Lexington, Kentucky to a full house of over eight hundred people.

In May of 2008, Space Between Breaths was named Best Documentary at the Sweet Auburn International Film Festival, an annual celebration of Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn Historic District. Since then the documentary has been screened in Boston, St. Louis, New York, Chattanooga, Frankfort, and Hilton Head Island. Screenings scheduled this summer include May 2nd in Huntington, New York, and June 13th in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Space Between Breaths is produced by Luther and Rosemary Smith, written and directed by Rosemary Smith; film editor, Richard Fong Zhu; cinematographers, Chip and Anne Swetnam; with an original score by two-time Grammy nominated recording artist Cindy Bullens.

Here is what parents who have lost children have to say about grief:
“I think there’s a wonderful discovery in grief, but you have to look through it with completely different eyes.” - Claudia Grammatico, Donor Mom, organ donation activist, and mother of Paul.

“Grief is an inescapable part of the experience of being human, because it is our natural response to the loss of something or someone we love.”
- Maria Housden, author of Hannah’s Gift (Bantam 2001), founder of Grief In Action, and mother of Hannah.

Rosemary, Maria Housden & Anne Swetnam, cinematographer

“It was ultimately my decision to do something to make the kind of difference in this world that I believe my daughter would have made.”
- Dan Crewe, founder of the Jessie Bullens-Crewe Foundation and father of Jessie.

Rosemary Smith and her husband Luther, met at the University of Kentucky; both became pharmacists, and they married shortly thereafter. They set up their practice in Beattyville, Kentucky. In June of 1992, they purchased a Sea Pines lot on Hilton Head, where they had frequently vacationed, and proceeded to build their home. In addition to the two sons they lost, Drew and Jeremiah, the Smiths have a third son, Jordan.