After Devastating Fire, Mother Is On A Mission To Make Christmas Special For Her Son
CHICAGO (CBS) – After a deadly fire on Chicago's Southwest Side, a mother is on a mission to make this Christmas special for her son.
CBS 2's Steven Graves with how she is pushing through her own trauma to make it happen.
Susan Collopy was described as feisty during a video on her 60th birthday.
Graves: "What is gonna be something you hold on to from her life?"
Compean: "She's always going to be with me and guiding me. Even when I'm lost and don't know what to do."
Collopy and her two puppies died in a house fire near Midway airport on Nov. 29.
Her daughter Melissa Compean -- who was told the fire was most likely caused by a lamp - first found the flames and rushed to get her 7-year-old son.
"So I started screaming like bloody murder, like 'Brayden get out! Hurry up! Come on, run run!"
He wasn't responding -- so she broke his bedroom window from outside to pull him out.
"And all I was breathing in was smoke and It was so hot. So unbelievably painful to my throat."
She grabbed him -- feeling his bloody arms. Paramedics rushed them both along with Compean's stepfather to local hospitals. Days later -- Brayden is still intubated with burns. Now with pneumonia and suffering from seizures at Loyola Hospital.
"You know Christmas is right around the corner. And I'm going to have to be here with him."
The mom now asking for anything to make Brayden's Christmas feel as normal as possible.
People have donated to their GoFundMe. Classmates created encouraging videos for him. The support he'll need when he learns his Grandma is no longer here.
"That news it may put him back. He's my drive to live. He's my everything. I don't want him to feel what I feel."
Hopefully feeling surrounded by love when he gets better and the miracle of a Christmas to remember in a good way - after so much loss.