Mom Club

Stevie and Kendra

Life is so unexpected and sometimes it can bring you to your knees.  In October of 2015, I found out that Stevie had died and it was so shocking and sad.  I immediately called her mom and I cried as I listened to her grief and overwhelming sorrow.  Right after this was when Kendra was getting ready to go to rehab, but before she left, she called Shelley and cried along with her.  She told Shelley that as soon as she returned from rehab, she would come and visit with her.  Sadly, that did not get to occur, because two days after Kendra was home from rehab, she was killed as a passenger in a horrific car accident.  Now it was Shelley calling me in disbelief, how could both of our girls be gone?

Our girls grew up together, attending each other's birthday parties, slumber parties and spending the night at each other's house.   Shelley and I would attend school assemblies and laugh, because even though the girls were in different classes, they would win a lot of the same awards.  From third grade through 6th grade, they both won student of the year awards from their separate classes.  Shelley and I even worked together for awhile.

We had always kept in touch throughout the years, but after the girls graduated high school, we would just see each other in passing.  But then in the fall of 2015, we came back together in a way that neither of us could have ever imagined or anticipated.  Out of our loss and grief, we formed an impromptu Mom Club. We started meeting for lunch, first at a grocery store, Dierbergs, where we would get a salad, then go upstairs to hide, eat and cry.  It just started becoming a thing and we would meet often, especially if one of us texted the other, that we were having a bad day.  We met there for about a year and a half.  Then we decided we could meet in a more public place and we chose Panera. We just met last week and Shelley asked me, "Can you believe we have been meeting for lunch for three years now"?  I said no, how could we have gone for three years now without our girls, three years of not seeing them, calling them, loving them?  Three years seems impossible.  We both agreed that this third year has been unexpectedly harder, that we still grieve for our girls, that in some aspects, it hurts more, their absence still so painful.  We like to imagine them in Heaven, together again!

Loss has brought us together and we have a bond that unless you have lost a child, you can not understand. We don't even have to speak, we just know, we just get it.  It sucks, it hurts and nothing can change the fact that they are not here with us.  This Mom Club has many members, all of us admitted without our consent, the price of admission into this club is way too high, way too painful and we are permanent members.  But this club also has some of the most strong, beautiful, resilient and loving women I have ever met and we are here for each other in a way no one else could be.  We do not even have to voice our pain and we are understood and that is both the joy and heartbreak of this club.  In fact, I have not met in person, most of the women in this club, but I love each and every one of them and pray for them constantly.

Stevie, Brandy and Kendra