Malcolm Wildszewski was an active, robust two-year-old on Mother’s Day 2020 when he came down with a low-grade fever. Yes, it was the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, but this seemed to his parents, Kim and Tara, like nothing more than a mild cold.
By the next morning, though, they knew that something was wrong. Usually strong and energetic, Malcolm could not even stand up. They took him to the emergency department at the hospital, where later that day, he seized unexpectedly. A day later, he was gone.
Malcolm’s death is among thousands each year that falls into the category of Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood, or SUDC. In such cases, children 12 months of age or older die suddenly in ways that remain unexplained even after a thorough investigation of possible causes.
“He was thriving, just incredibly healthy (before that),” Kim says. “We would often refer to him as ‘sturdy.’ He was joyful, he was all sunshine, he was happy, and it wasn’t like we missed something. It was that he just was here and then he wasn’t.”
Losing a young child unexpectedly would be a terrible thing under any circumstances. But Kim and Tara also experienced this loss during the first months of the pandemic, when holding a memorial service for loved ones was out of the question.
“That was otherworldly, and unbelievably awful,” Kim says. “We couldn’t be hugged. There was no physicality to our grief.”
Tara and Kim knew that they wanted to do something both to honor Malcolm and to bring greater awareness to SUDC. Last spring, they organized the first ever Miles for Malcolm Walk/Run, raising more than $20,000 to benefit SUDC.
On Saturday, April 29, they will host the second annual Miles for Malcolm event, and like last year it will take place at the Pennington Montessori School, 4 Tree Farm Road in Hopewell, where Malcolm was once an attendee.
Race day will begin at 9 a.m., when kids 8 and under are invited to a fun run. At 9:30, walkers, joggers, shufflers, stroller pushers and runners are welcome to join for the 5K or 5-mile routes.
“There are a number of reasons we chose an event like this. One is that we run as a practice of stress relief and feeling hopeful. It fits with our coping mechanism,” Tara says. “But I also think that, Malcolm was so alive, so present, that doing something like this that is full-body aliveness felt like a perfect way to honor him.”
Pennington Montessori was one of Malcolm’s favorite places. After his passing, the school dedicated a grove of fruit tress on the grounds called Malcolm’s Orchard.
In addition to its ongoing support, the school has once again offered the use of the school grounds to start and end the run/walk in Malcolm’s honor. Many of the organizers and participants in the event are parents of Malcolm’s Pennington Montessori classmates.
“Pennington Montessori school is honored to host Miles for Malcolm. We wouldn’t think of having this event anywhere else. Everyone loved and misses Malcolm and his sweet spirit. His joyful nature lives on within the school. We are blessed to have the entire Wildszewski family as part of our school community,” Pennington Montessori director Kathleen Hannah said in a media release.
“We have this incredible team of people who make this possible,” says Kim, a minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of at Washington Crossing. “Everyone on the team knew Malcolm, they were Malcolm’s closest friends, they are our closest friends.”
She says when the leadership team of the SUDC Foundation came to last year’s event, they were “mouths open in awe” at how the larger Hopewell community supported the event in such significant ways.
“To have our community come out and just be present to us and with us, and then also as an outcome to be able to raise so much money, makes us feel we can do a little bit of something both with our grief and with his death,” she says.
The first Miles for Malcolm event attracted some 370 registered participants — including virtual racers — and the Wildszewskis are hopeful of an even greater turnout this year.
“As much as we want this to be in celebration of Malcolm, we also want it to last longer that just one year or two years,” Kim says. “We want to try to imprint this in the community.”
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The Wildszewskis have been in Hopewell Valley since 2014. They met in Washington, and lived in North Jersey for a time before settling here. They have two other children: Tobias, a second grader at Bear Tavern Elementary School, and Otis, who was born in 2021.
“Tobias is our 7 1/2-year-old. He is brilliant and bright and athletic and funny and charismatic and all the good things you would want,” Kim says. “He is 2 1/2 years older than Malcolm. When Malcolm died, we knew we weren’t done parenting a toddler. Tara has carried each of our children, so we decided for her to get pregnant pretty immediately after his passing. Otis was born May 3, 2021.”
Before children, Tara was an avid runner. The data analyst and native of Omaha, Nebraska, has completed a marathon and several half marathons and often ran upward of 70 miles a week.
Kim, a native of Long Island, was never so avid a runner, though she shares that running actually played a significant role in hers and Tara’s relationship.
“I’ve only run one half marathon, and that was only because Tara was an incredible partner and incredibly patient and trained me,” Kim says. “I ran the half marathon with her and because of her. At the end of it, that’s when we decided we were going to get married. Helping each other specifically in that way is so much a part of our story.”
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In addition to the races and fun run, Miles for Malcolm will also feature face painting, crafts, live music, vendors and more. Sign up for the timed and untimed, live and virtual races is online at milesformalcolm.org.
Registration is $35 (no fee for the fun run) and the organizers say that proceeds will benefit the SUDC Foundation’s mission to promote awareness, advocate for research, and support those affected by sudden unexplained death in childhood.
Miles for Malcolm will be held on Sunday, April 29, 2023 in honor of Malcolm Wildszewski, who died in May 2020 at the age of two.,
