- April 19, 2024
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How Melissa Chipps’ grief after the sudden death of her son, Alec Allison, drove her away from home.
Alec Allison had more than 200 friends, but he wanted more: 1,096, to be exact. He told his mother’s boyfriend Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2010, that he would reach that many friends on Facebook by Friday, Dec. 17. He never got the chance.
The 13-year-old Buddy Taylor Middle School student, who was known to help his elderly neighbors carry in their groceries, watched “The Karate Kid” on Thursday night. He had spaghetti with his mother, Melissa Chipps, and he went to bed.
Then, in a tragedy that has since haunted Chipps out of her condo and spurred her to leave behind her job and her belongings and leave the state, Alec never woke up.
“He was a vibrant young man,” Chipps said via phone, Monday, Jan. 17, from Beebe, Ark., where she and her 10-year-old daughter, Alexey, are staying.
“On Dec. 17, I woke up at 6:15 a.m.,” Chipps said. “I got up to get him ready for school, and he was just laying in his bed. His eyes were half open, his lips were purple.”
She started CPR. She called the ambulance. At 7:10 a.m., the doctors at the hospital told her Alec was dead.
It didn’t make sense. Alec was healthy; he was about 6 feet tall. Yes, he’d had a pacemaker since he was an infant, but it hadn’t ever seemed to affect his health. In fact, the pacemaker was scheduled to be removed.
“They said he had been gone for at least a couple of hours,” Chipps said. “On the death certificate, it said his heart stopped in his sleep.”
Alec was respectful and “didn’t know a stranger,” Chipps said. He was active in his church and attended monthly school dances. He helped tutor other kids at school, scored in the 95th percentile on the FCAT and excelled in his honors classes.
“The last thing I ever said to my son was, ‘Go to bed, good night, I love you,’” Chipps said. “I didn’t get a chance to put him in the hospital or save his life. I feel like a thief in the night came.”
She said the months since Alec died has been the longest 30 days of her life.
“It feels like 10 years,” Chipps said. “Every day I feel like I’m going to wake up and it’s just a dream. But it’s not … I’m really mad that God decided to take him, because we could have used more people like him on this earth.”
Send condolences to 917B S. Apple St., Beebe, Ark., 72012. Or, become Alec’s friend on Facebook.
Two days after he died, Chipps spent all Sunday night clicking “Accept” on all Alec’s friend requests on Facebook. She read note after note of people she didn’t even know, saying how much he will be missed.
By the end of the night, Alec, whom Chipps said loved computers and would have been pleased, had surpassed the 1,096 mark, and then some. His mother still manages his page.
