The Girls From Ames Part 10

Karla found herself contemplating the fact that she didn't know the whereabouts of her own biological parents. She couldn't help but wonder: What insights to Christie's illness might be revealed in their medical histories? Was the woman named on Karla's birth certificate the same woman Mrs. Derby had phoned years later? Mrs. Derby had come upon the woman because of the article she wrote about the high prevalence of cancer in her family. The cancer connection was concerning at the time. Now, given Christie's plight, it was frightening. Would this woman have medical information that could help Christie?

Karla was too overwhelmed with Christie's care to pursue any efforts to find her biological parents. But she thought about them. They had let her out of their lives on that spring day in 1963 with nothing but a cloth diaper. OK, that was the choice they made. But now Christie, their biological granddaughter, was very sick. And Karla felt that her other two children were also ent.i.tled to crucial answers about their genetic backgrounds.

Karla didn't bother Christie with any of these details about the genetic history that may have led her to that hospital room. And in any case, Christie was a realist. She believed in playing the cards she was dealt. Rather than crying over her bad hand, she wondered how she might improve it.

She decided to try cutting-edge treatments. Her antinausea medicine wasn't working, so her oncologist had her trained in the relaxation technique of guided imagery, where she used her five senses to imagine visiting "a happy place." Her family had once lived in Seattle, so for her happy place, she chose Seattle's Pike Place Market. She'd imagine herself at that market, tasting the fruit, smelling the flowers and watching all the fish being thrown around and loaded onto carts. Often, when she used guided imagery, she wouldn't throw up.

A reporter from Newsweek Newsweek who who, doing a story on alternative therapies, learned about her from the hospital and interviewed her. She was so excited by the possibility of being quoted in the magazine. In her online journal she continually reminded people to look for the story, but the news cycle kept getting in the way. First, the piece was b.u.mped to make room for coverage of the Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., sniper attacks. A week later, Christie wrote, "Don't go out and buy doing a story on alternative therapies, learned about her from the hospital and interviewed her. She was so excited by the possibility of being quoted in the magazine. In her online journal she continually reminded people to look for the story, but the news cycle kept getting in the way. First, the piece was b.u.mped to make room for coverage of the Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., sniper attacks. A week later, Christie wrote, "Don't go out and buy Newsweek Newsweek . I got b.u.mped again, because of the election." Finally, the story ran. "Two exciting pieces of news!" Christie wrote. "I'm in this week's . I got b.u.mped again, because of the election." Finally, the story ran. "Two exciting pieces of news!" Christie wrote. "I'm in this week's Newsweek Newsweek and I get to go home for Thanksgiving. It doesn't get any better than this!" and I get to go home for Thanksgiving. It doesn't get any better than this!"

Workers at Pike Place Market in Seattle saw the Newsweek Newsweek story, and a month later, two of them surprised Christie by flying to Minneapolis. They brought gifts for every kid on her floor at the hospital. They had real fish, fruit, T-s.h.i.+rts, flowers, hats. They even brought stuffed fake fish to the hospital playroom, and they threw the fish back and forth, just like they do in Seattle. Christie wrote about the thrill of seeing her "happy place" come to life right there in the hospital. story, and a month later, two of them surprised Christie by flying to Minneapolis. They brought gifts for every kid on her floor at the hospital. They had real fish, fruit, T-s.h.i.+rts, flowers, hats. They even brought stuffed fake fish to the hospital playroom, and they threw the fish back and forth, just like they do in Seattle. Christie wrote about the thrill of seeing her "happy place" come to life right there in the hospital.

Christie's journal was also a doc.u.ment of what the early teen years were like, circa 2002/2003. When she was out of the hospital and got to see movies (often wearing a mask to avoid infections), she'd review them in her journal. She found that Legally Blonde 2 Legally Blonde 2 wasn't as good as the original, "but I still thought it was cute." She also got a kick out of Jennifer Lopez in wasn't as good as the original, "but I still thought it was cute." She also got a kick out of Jennifer Lopez in Maid in Manhattan Maid in Manhattan. (The Ames girls took note, and in a parallel universe where life was still normal, sent their healthy daughters to the same movies.) Christie's writing was conversational. She took to calling the hospital "the Ritz," as in: "My brother, Ben, and mom slept over here last night at the Ritz." Her sense of humor came through in most every entry. She called the anesthetic she'd taken before surgery "milk of amnesia." When her hair eventually grew back after chemotherapy, she described what it felt like to use shampoo again and the thrill of walking around with a head that "smells like fresh fruit."

From the time Christie was in fourth grade, she and Karla had been in a mother/daughter book club with six of Christie's friends and their moms. The club continued even after she got sick. Christie sometimes felt self-conscious, given her condition and the fact that she needed to wear a mask over her mouth and nose to avoid other people's germs. She wrote about one book-club meeting: "Of course my mom made me wear my mask." Then, as usual, Christie turned positive, with a happy face emoticon as punctuation: "I have established quite a talent, through all of this, where I'm able to eat and drink with a mask on!! "

Reading Christie's journal day after day, Sally eventually came to a realization: The entries, with all the descriptions of Karla's devotion, were turning Sally into a better, more patient, more loving mother. As a fifth-grade teacher, Sally noticed something else. She was becoming a better, more patient teacher, too. The kids in her cla.s.s were "the most important people in the universe," Sally would tell herself, simply because each one of them was someone's child.

By May 2003, doctors considered Christie to be in remission. She went home and eventually rejoined her soccer team, with what she called "a very cute, short short haircut." In her journal, she remarked about how far she'd come. "We were all getting lined up and ready to play, and that's when it really occurred to me: I had cancer and I had beaten it."

For the girls from Ames, that entry was a great relief. Kelly decided to mark Christie's improved health by using frequent flier miles to get a plane ticket for Karla to fly to Maryland for an Ames girls get-together. Karla at first agreed, then tried to back out. She called other Ames girls, saying she didn't want to leave Christie. But because Kelly already had the ticket, she eventually felt compelled to go.

When Kelly came to Karla's house to pick her up for the trip, Christie was home, standing on the front lawn in her soccer uniform. Her hair, short and very fine, was blowing in the breeze. It's amazing, Kelly thought, how strong she looks in that uniform. Christie told her mom to have a great time, and as Karla and Kelly drove away, Christie waved good-bye with this giant smile on her face. Maybe she'll be OK, Kelly thought.

They spent the weekend at Jenny's house in Annapolis-Angela and Jane came, too-and they all celebrated their fortieth birthdays and the fact that Christie was in remission. Karla was weary but grateful-for her old friends and for her daughter's good news.

They talked about very serious things: Angela opened up to the other girls about her younger brother, who in 1999 died of complications from AIDS. She explained how he was on his deathbed and the family minister came by to suggest that he still had time to repent for his h.o.m.os.e.xuality. Kelly, who had a close gay relative, was empathetic. She knew well what it's like to have a gay loved one in such a conservative part of the world.

It seemed to Kelly as if Christie's illness had opened all of them up, brought them closer.

There was plenty of laughter, too, at the gathering. One night, while talking about s.e.x, the girls laughed so hard that they all needed to use the bathroom at the same time. "I was actually crawling to the bathroom, trying to get there before Karla," Kelly wrote in an email to the girls who couldn't make it. "We were laughing so hard we could hardly function. Next time, I'm bringing my Depends!"

The weekend also had moments that hung in the air in frightening ways. At one point, Jane talked about how thrilling it was that Christie was in remission. What incredible news! Karla spoke but didn't smile. "It's all so fragile," she said. "I don't know what I'll do if I lose her." Hearing the fear in her voice left the other girls feeling collectively crushed.

As usual for these get-togethers, Karla and Kelly were roommates. They shared a queen-sized bed in Jenny's guest room, and the bond between them was strengthened. After they returned their rental car at the airport, they were heading to the terminal on a shuttle bus and Karla snuggled up next to Kelly and said, "I'm going to miss sleeping with you." The other people on the bus stared at them, taken aback by what they'd just heard, and Karla and Kelly couldn't contain their laughter.

Even after Christie was feeling better and had moved home, she kept writing in the online journal, detailing what she considered "regular kid stuff." Then came the entry on June 16, 2003: "About a week ago, my mom started to notice I had a lot of bruises, more than a regular kid. I, of course, had an explanation for it. I had fallen down on my roller blades. But I think I secretly knew it wasn't because of that. Yesterday, I was talking to my parents while reading my new 'Chicken Soup' book. I was wearing shorts, and I had a lot more bruises than earlier in the week. Then last night, when I was brus.h.i.+ng my teeth, I noticed a black mouth sore. I told my mom and she called the doctor. The doctor said she wanted me in at 9 A.M. today for a complete blood count and a bone marrow test. I knew this all a little too well. After they got my blood back, the doctor told us my platelets were low and my white count was very high. I have relapsed."

Scheduled for surgery the next day and then a new round of chemotherapy, she typed the entry from her hospital room: "One of my good friends, Jessie, came down to the hospital today. After tears and silence, we were 13-year-old girls again. We read magazines, played games, and did what we do best, talk and laugh. Thanks, Jessie, for coming down. You are a great friend."

As Christie got sicker, confined to the hospital, she wrote about getting "fidgety" in her room. She longed to breathe fresh air, to walk her dog. "The walls are closing in around me," she wrote. It was another echo of Anne Frank, who was unable to leave the secret annex where she was hiding.

Christie's relapse weighed heavily on the Ames girls, especially Kelly, who decided that she couldn't handle visiting Christie anymore at the hospital. Overwhelmed by what she came to call "the sadness of it all," she stopped calling or emailing Karla, too. "We're used to Christie being a girl with this frail, luminous beauty, and now her body has just swelled," Kelly told the other girls. "It's hard for me to see her." She was terribly upset with herself: How could she break off contact at a time like this? "But I was literally unable to find words to tell Karla it would be OK," Kelly later explained. "I didn't think it would be OK, and I couldn't face Karla-or Christie-and pretend."

Christie, meanwhile, remained upbeat. After a seven-week hospital stay in the fall of 2003, she got to go home for a while. She typed out her entry on the home computer and ended it by writing: "Well, got to go. My parents are making something in the kitchen that smells pretty good. Ahh! A home-cooked meal at home, where a kid should be. Life is good, and you just need to take it day by day. Be thankful to see the sun rise and set each day. Thank you for your love and support."

On December 31, 2003, back in the hospital, she wrote that she had much to be grateful for. Her family had come to be with her. They ate popcorn, shared a bottle of sparkling cider, and toasted the new year.

Her fourteenth birthday was January 9, and she described it as "a great day" even though she had a temperature of 100.7 and a two-hour nosebleed. Three days later, she still had a fever. She wrote of having a scan on her lungs and a scope up her nose. On January 14, she wrote of being "tired and weak." She ended the entry, "Thanks for checking in on me. Love, Christie."

From then on, Karla and Bruce took over posting updates. They explained that Christie had developed fungus in her lungs, a very serious condition. She was on oxygen to help her breathe. "The doctors are very concerned with Christie's current condition, and have told us not to give up hope. However, they have prepared us for the worst. We ask again for your thoughts and prayers."

By February 1, Christie had been heavily sedated for days. "She's unable to give us any response," Bruce wrote. "We still talk to her, read to her and play her favorite music. We've got a nice window to watch the snowstorm from."

On February 12, Karla wrote that Christie was awake, but perhaps due to the morphine, she seemed "scared, confused and very agitated. She screams a lot of the time. She doesn't know her name, age or the rest of our family. She talks a lot of nonsense, which is very hard for us, because we were so excited to 'have her back.' "

On February 16, doctors found blood clots in her bladder and urine. The painful procedure to irrigate her bladder didn't go well. "She screamed in agony for about 36 hours," Karla wrote. "It was excruciating to watch."

At 11:47 A.M. on Friday, February 20, Karla posted this entry: "Christie has taken a critical turn for the worse. She has multi-system failure. Bruce, Ben, Jackie and I are all here with her. Please pray for answers and comfort for her."

At 8:07 P.M. that night, all Karla could bring herself to type onto the Web site was this: "Christie Rae Blackwood, 1/9/1990-2/20/2004."

At her home in Northfield, Minnesota, Kelly saw the online posting and touched the words on her computer screen. It was an impulse, she later thought, to wipe the words away.

In Ma.s.sachusetts, Jane had been monitoring the site all day. When that final posting went up, she mouthed the words "oh my G.o.d," and was soon calling the other Ames girls. She, too, described her response as an instinctual act, as if she were a bird calling out to other birds that they all needed to return to their nest. The girls began calling their bosses to say they wouldn't be coming to work the next day. They tracked down babysitters for their kids. They called their husbands. And one by one, they made plans to head for airports. They were going to Minneapolis to be with Karla.

Angela was the only one who didn't think she could make it. But when an email finally came in that she, too, would be there, Kelly again found herself touching the computer screen. (As she later put it: "It was like I was feeling the power of my friends.h.i.+p with these women.") Through tears, she allowed herself to smile. "We're all going to be here," she thought. Because Marilyn had a big house and lived just a half hour from Karla, she invited all the girls to stay with her.

Later that night, someone wrote on the Web site that families in Christie's neighborhood in Minnesota had lit candles in the Blackwoods' yard. They also turned on lights in their homes, as a way to honor Christie. Thousands of miles away, in different corners of the country, the Ames girls turned on lights in their homes, too.

Of course, it was the least they could do. And some were already feeling guilty for not having done more while Christie was alive: Why hadn't they flown to Minneapolis more, sent more money, asked Christie how they might make her happy, told Karla they loved her? The responsibilities of friends.h.i.+p are not easily defined, especially in traumatic times. How much is too much? How little is too little? They had trouble talking about these guilt feelings in the days after Christie's death. But the feelings were there, unspoken, in all of their heads.

All of the Ames girls arrived within hours of each other on the day before the memorial service. Jenny, flying in from Maryland, was the last to land at the airport. At age forty-one, she was pregnant with her first child, and the sight of her was such a thrill for the other girls that, for a brief moment, it overshadowed their grief.

All the girls, except Karla, of course, camped out at Marilyn's house the night before the funeral. It was a tremendously sad evening, and yet, like always, the girls reminisced and found themselves giggling. "I feel guilty laughing," Jenny said, and that was a trigger for all of them, so they'd get teary again. That's how it went all night.

The conversation turned to how s.e.x-toy parties were being run like Tupperware parties in some of their neighborhoods. One of the girls-they've sworn not to say who it was-talked about using a silver bullet during s.e.x. It was all surreal. Talking about s.e.x toys. Grieving for Karla. Crying, then laughing, then crying, then laughing.

It was perhaps the most intense bonding they'd ever done, and Jane said aloud what all of them were thinking: "I wish we could call Karla. I wish she could just come over. She'd want to be here with us."

Christie's church memorial service was attended by 750 friends, relatives, cla.s.smates and medical staffers. Karla, of course, sat with her family. But the other Ames girls filled a pew. It occurred to Kelly, as they sat there in shades of gray and black, that it was not unlike their school years, when they'd all sit in the same row for a.s.semblies.

Dozens of Christie's middle-school cla.s.smates entered the church together, and because the pews were already filled, they sat three across in the aisles. Almost all of the Ames girls began crying at the sight of Christie's girlfriends, all of whom had decided to dress in pink as a way of honoring her. The Ames girls were reminded, of course, of their middle-school years together. They knew how profound the loss would be for Christie's friends.

At one point, though, Kelly found herself feeling almost elated. She looked over at Jenny, pregnant and healthy, about to become a mother. Yes, they had lost Christie, and that was awful. But there was new life coming into their lives, too. "I was feeling joy in that moment," Kelly later said.

After the service, everyone went back to Karla's house. There were more than a hundred people there, and though the Ames girls mingled for a while, they naturally gravitated toward each other. One by one, they ended up in the master bedroom, until all ten, including Karla, were sitting on the large king-sized bed.

Someone closed the door, and there they were. They could hear the m.u.f.fled noise from all the people in the kitchen and living room, but it was as if no one else existed. They noticed that they were touching each other. Everyone had a hand on a shoulder, an arm, a hand. It was a physical connection they hadn't planned, but it felt natural and inevitable.

Someone asked Karla if she wanted to talk about the last moments of Christie's life, and it was comforting for her to share those details with all of them. Jane stroked Karla's arm as she spoke about Christie's final hours-and then about her final minutes.

Karla used so many complicated medical terms as she spoke. Her eighteen months at Christie's bedside had left her sounding like a medschool graduate. Kelly marveled at her command of the details. "I've never heard Karla sound so articulate," she thought. "I'm so proud of her."

The girls found a few reasons to smile and even to laugh. They reminisced a little, too, about the eleven girls they were, when Sheila was a part of them.

Gathering together on that king-sized bed happened spontaneously. But in that moment, all ten of them later realized, they saw clearly that true friends.h.i.+p means a willingness to share both joy and complete despair.

As Kelly later described it: Outside that door, grief was waiting to envelop Karla. But in that bedroom, for that half hour, a profound sisterly love was holding it all at bay.

13.Tears in the Ladies' Room

Over dessert one night at the reunion, Jane asks if she can stand up and say a few words. Her daughter, Hanna, has just celebrated her bat mitzvah. For her "mitzvah project"-her effort to do a good deed-she chose to raise money for Caring Bridge, the Web site where Christie had posted her journal.

When Christie was diagnosed, Hanna was only eight years old, but she had immersed herself in Christie's Web postings. Now Hanna is thirteen. "She's the same age as Christie was when she was sick," Jane tells the other girls. "So Hanna feels even more moved by what Christie went through."

Hanna raised $420 for Caring Bridge, and wrote an essay about how Christie's journey helped her put her life in perspective. "My challenges seem like ants compared to Christie's challenge, which was a monster," Hanna wrote. "She has inspired me to never run away from my dreams. From now on, I will not take each day for granted. Christie's spirit lives on inside of me. I will never forget her."

When Jane finishes reading, she looks up and her eyes meet Karla's. Both of them smile weakly at each other. Around the table, some of the other girls have tears in their eyes.

The room is silent for a moment, and then Kelly talks. "Christie had this short life," she says, "but there was this force about her. You see it in her photos. She literally glowed in her years here."

A few of the other girls weigh in with compliments, too, and Karla tells them she appreciates their words. She says she's buoyed when people tell her how they've been touched by Christie. "Her oncologist called her the most balanced and focused person she had ever known, child or adult," Karla says.

She knows how the other girls ache for her. She knows that her loss has left them all doubly grateful that their children are alive and healthy. "Please thank Hanna for me," Karla tells Jane. "Christie would be proud of her."

On the evening of Christie's memorial service, after everyone had gathered at Karla's house in Edina, the time eventually came for the Ames girls to leave. They had to drive back to Marilyn's house, thirty minutes away, to get their suitcases. The following morning, they would head for the airport to return to their own lives.

Karla watched them gather up their coats and felt an urge that she didn't articulate. "I want to go with them," she thought. "I don't want them to leave without me."

It would be such a relief if she could squeeze with them into a crowded car and just drive away, as she did on so many nights when they were young-crammed together, giggling and chattering and nudging each other. Of course, she didn't tell them, "Please take me with you." She remained strong. She hugged each one of them good-bye, longer and tighter than she ever had, and then she returned to the kitchen, where some of her newer friends from Edina were gathered.

The weeks and months that followed were extremely difficult for Karla. The girls would call her house and invariably get her answering machine. That was because Karla often just let the phone ring. Her life had become very narrow. She was getting up in the morning, making breakfast for Ben and Jackie, packing their lunches, getting them on the bus, and then vegetating for much of the day, often in bed.

For months, her biggest goal was to shower and get dressed before the kids got home from school so there would be some semblance of a normal home life. "That's all I could do," she later confided to Kelly. "I don't mean to sound dramatic. It was just the only way I could cope, in little steps."

Bruce was a rock for Karla, a hero, but she tried not to overwhelm him with details about her emotional pain. She just tried to get through, mostly on her own.

It took about a year after Christie's death for her to begin turning back to the Ames girls, sharing with them things she had trouble telling others in her life.

She told them of how she'd fall asleep each night feeling sad and restless. At 3 or 4 A.M., she was often waking up with a start, in a cold sweat, confused, thinking she was back with Christie and needed to help her with her IV line.

Early in September 2005, she sent an email to everyone. "I'm having quite a week, grief-wise," she wrote. "The first day of school was agonizing, only putting two kids on the bus, and knowing Christie would have started high school that day. Cancer sucks. I'll sign off now, I'm such a downer this morning."

As time went on, Jane became an especially valued confidant for Karla. "I don't think I'll ever again be the happy person I was," Karla told her on the phone one night. "I accept that. I know I can't expect to be happy, not right away, not in the same way. But I just feel as if it will never happen at all."

When they were younger, Karla and Jane weren't considered a close pair within the Ames girls universe. Jane was more serious, always twinned with Marilyn. Karla had more of a free spirit. So Jane and Karla were never an obvious twosome.

As adults, however, in the wake of Christie's death, they became more closely connected. Jane could see both the intelligence and the heart within Karla-facets of her she hadn't always paid close attention to before. And at her very lowest times, Karla found Jane to be a wise and loving source of comfort.

Both were pleased with the blossoming of their relations.h.i.+p, and it was noticed in the dynamics of the larger group. At their reunions after Christie died, some of the girls would mildly complain that they couldn't get time alone with Karla because Jane was always by her side.

( Jane would remain forever bonded to Marilyn, of course, rooted in how close they were in Ames. As adults, though, there were subjects they didn't talk about in great detail. Marilyn had married a man who viewed his Christian faith as the cornerstone of his life, and she had embraced that way of living, too. She had been taught that the only way to enter heaven was to believe in Jesus. Because she had close Jewish friends in Minnesota, and then Jane, of course, she was troubled by the thought that she'd get to heaven and might see people she cared about being turned away. "I would hate that," she said. "I'll want to see all my friends again after I die." She called Jane, who explained that many Jewish people believe that when they die, they die. Jane pretty much rejected the idea that there was an afterlife. Marilyn said she has great respect for the beliefs of others, but "I'm concerned by the idea that some people may be excluded.") Meanwhile, in part because of her time spent with Jane, Karla became interested in Judaism. Christie's death had led her to question her faith, and the idea of heaven and h.e.l.l. She felt Judaism might be clearer about things: You die and you return to the earth. It felt more direct and manageable to Karla.

Jane answered Karla's questions about Judaism, but never pushed. She knew that Karla's uncertainties about faith were part of the grieving process.

Karla also confided that she sometimes felt uncomfortable seeing people at church or when she was out in public. Many people in Edina were aware of Christie's story. After a child dies, word spreads. So when Karla ventured out of the house, she could feel people looking at her. She sensed they were whispering: "There's that mother who lost her daughter." She'd meet someone, introduce herself, and the other person would invariably recognize her name and say, "Oh yes, of course, you're Karla. How are you doing?"

"Here in Edina, Bruce and I will always be the couple who lost a child," she told Jane. "That's just the way it's going to be. And we make some people uncomfortable. I know we do. There will be acquaintances at the supermarket. I know they see me. But I can feel them turning their carts to go up a different aisle. They don't know what to say, so they avoid me."

As time went on, Karla was asked to be a spokeswoman of sorts for parents who had lost children to cancer. She agreed to attend some local cancer-research benefits, but it made her uncomfortable. "All I wanted was to be a mom, at home with my husband and kids on a Sat.u.r.day night with a big bag of popcorn, watching a movie," she said. "Now I feel as if everyone wants a piece of me."

Karla also spoke frankly with Jane about the emotions she felt when she'd run into Christie's old friends around town. A part of her loved seeing them blossom into teenagers-reaching age fifteen, then sixteen, then seventeen. But she also found herself feeling melancholy when she saw them.

As Bruce and Karla tried to resume their normal lives, they made a point of going on a "date" to Starbucks once a week. One day, while they were having coffee, they saw Christie's close friend Kate at the counter. Kate gave them a big h.e.l.lo and told them that a lot of Christie's old pals were there, too. "We're all in the back doing homework," she said. "Come say hi."

Karla saw them back there, all of them looking so mature. "They had their laptops out. They were cramming for finals," she later told Jane. "They'll be seniors soon, looking at colleges. And I couldn't stop thinking: Christie should be there. She should be there in Starbucks with those girls, buying coffee, studying for finals, talking about going to the prom, picking a college."

There were too many encounters like that, and it was hard for Karla to find a place where she could retreat from it all, somewhere she didn't feel sad or uneasy. "I've always loved my house. But I'm unhappy being in it," she said. "I've always loved my neighborhood, loved Minnesota, but it doesn't feel right being here."Jane and Karla today Jane listened to her. "I think it's hard for you to be in a place where Christie suffered so much," she said, and her words resonated with Karla.

Christie had been cremated, and a portion of her ashes were in a garden at the church Karla's family attended. Christie's room had been left pretty much as it was when she lived there. For those reasons and hundreds of others, it would be hard to move out of Minnesota. The family didn't want to feel as if they would be leaving her behind.

Still, maybe Jane had it right. "Maybe I can never be happy again if I stay here," Karla said. "Maybe we have to think about going."

In the first three years after Christie's death, the Ames girls tried to calibrate the depths of Karla's grief and her progress in finding ways to smile again. Many times over the phone, they just let Karla talk.

"This woman asked me if I think about Christie in every thought," Karla said one night to Kelly. "I told her, 'No. She's not in every thought. But she is still definitely in every other thought.' That's a change from how I've been. So maybe that's progress. For a long time, I was thinking of Christie every minute of every day."

The girls had long discussions about a gift they might get Karla that would mark their friends.h.i.+p and remind them that they'd always be there for her. Eventually Jenny decided to commission a Scherenschnitte, Scherenschnitte, which is German for "scissors paper-cutting." It included the words "Friends by Chance, Sisters by Choice," along with silhouettes of ten girls holding hands, encircling a map of the United States. On the map, ten stars marked the ten cities where the girls now live. The city of Ames, just about in the center of the map, was marked by a heart. Inside the heart was another little silhouette of a girl; this represented Sheila, who grew up in Ames and is buried there. The paper-cutting turned out to be a gift for Karla that they all shared. The next time they gathered for an annual reunion, at Diana's house in Arizona, Jenny gave everyone a copy as a gift. which is German for "scissors paper-cutting." It included the words "Friends by Chance, Sisters by Choice," along with silhouettes of ten girls holding hands, encircling a map of the United States. On the map, ten stars marked the ten cities where the girls now live. The city of Ames, just about in the center of the map, was marked by a heart. Inside the heart was another little silhouette of a girl; this represented Sheila, who grew up in Ames and is buried there. The paper-cutting turned out to be a gift for Karla that they all shared. The next time they gathered for an annual reunion, at Diana's house in Arizona, Jenny gave everyone a copy as a gift.

When they weren't physically together, the girls found email to be a great way to un.o.btrusively stay in touch with Karla and support her. In their chatty "reply all" emails, sometimes they would mention Christie and sometimes they wouldn't. Whether Karla answered them or not, the emails allowed Karla to know they were all thinking about her. They sent emails to mark Christie's birthday, January 9, and the day she died, February 20. Karen sent Karla flowers on her birthday, April 25. Jenny was always sending handwritten cards.

Since both Kelly and Marilyn lived in Minnesota, they were able to pin down a few lunch dates with Karla. Once, the three of them walked around a nearby lake, just talking. Karla told them of her worries about Jackie and Ben. Ben was always a bright boy, but when he had a few issues at school-focusing, turning in homework-was it laziness? Attention deficit disorder? Or was he mourning Christie and unable to focus because he was worried about how his parents were coping? "I just don't know the dynamics," Karla said.

"Ben and Jackie are so protective of you," Kelly told her. "When I see them with you, I can see them taking care of you, as if they're saying, 'Mom, don't worry. It'll be OK.'"

"Those poor kids," Karla answered. "They've got so much to handle."

"It'll get easier," Marilyn told her.

"It's got to get easier," Karla responded, "because I can't imagine living like this forever."

At one point, the conversation turned to Marilyn's dad and his memorial service in Ames after he died in 2004. Dr. McCormack was seventy-nine. "It really was a celebration of his life," Kelly said of the service. "He lived such a full life." That got Karla thinking about her own father's death in 1990.

"I used to think that my father died young," she said. "I used to think, 'Oh my G.o.d, he missed out on so much. He was just sixty-eight. His life was so short.' I don't think that way anymore. Now I think that my father lived a long time. I have this totally new perspective. The way I think now, any life that lasts longer than fourteen years, well, that feels like a full life to me."

Sheila's death was the major loss that all of the Ames girls shared in their early twenties. But as they aged, each of them experienced deaths in her own family. By their thirties and forties, they all had endured grief that would inform the rest of their lives. No one ever wanted to compare the magnitude of their various sorrows. But they came to have a shorthand sense of grief that helped them comfort and buoy each other-especially Karla.

Like Karla, Karen had insights into the pain of losing a child.

Her first son was born in 1992, and nine months later, she found herself unexpectedly pregnant again. It was a shock to her that she became pregnant so soon, and she was less than overjoyed at the news. It was a difficult pregnancy, too. She spent much of the first trimester vomiting. In time, however, she embraced the idea of having another child. When she and her husband learned they would be having a little girl, they selected the name Emily.

Five months into the pregnancy, however, when Karen was already in maternity clothes, she had an amniocentesis that showed the baby had severe spina bifida. The baby's brain was actually growing outside of her head. (Spina bifida, which means "split spine," occurs when a baby's spinal column doesn't close completely in the womb. Scientists suspect that genetic and environmental factors conspire to cause it. Seven out of every ten thousand babies born have spina bifida; those with less serious forms of this birth defect can live a normal life.) In Karen's case, the situation was dire, and one of the doctors who made the diagnosis got right to the point. "You have to decide whether to terminate the pregnancy or go through with it," he said. "Think about what is right for you and your family."