Our daughter, Sloan, is part of a group of six girls who formed a deep friendship during high school and have managed to maintain it even two years into their time at college .
I show them here on the day of their high school graduation when their whole wonderful future stretched out in front of them - and they just knew it was going to be fabulous!
They were lucky enough to live charmed lives with parents who loved them, a small town that nurtured them and a wider group of friends to hang around with.
This past weekend one of the girls, Clare, lost her mother. Having just lost mine recently, I know a little bit about how she feels, only I had mine for much longer and I was a grown woman with a family of my own when it happened. How does a 20 year old girl feel? A young woman who is not yet out on her own, a young woman who could have really used her mother's presence for a while longer.
It is perhaps the first taste any of them have had of untimely grief. You kind of expect your grandparents to die, but someone so close is unthinkable. A dark cloud in the sunny sky that is their lives.
I'm so proud of the other girls, who have rallied around their friend and tried to help her as much as they can. She'll need all the support she can get in the months to come as she gets through the funeral and then back to college where she'll have to pick up the pieces of her life and deal with these difficult feelings at the same time.
But I know she'll be in good hands with these five fast friends who will wrap her up in their support and love and, even from different college campuses, reach out to their hurting friend.
They're good kids. They're loyal like that.
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