{"id":1794,"date":"2017-10-23T07:14:11","date_gmt":"2017-10-23T11:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=1794"},"modified":"2017-10-23T10:53:34","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T14:53:34","slug":"from-strangers-to-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/from-strangers-to-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"From Strangers to Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Robin<\/a>\u201cI\u2019m at the bricks. Just keep walking toward the pavilion. I want to show you my son\u2019s brick,\u201d a new friend said when I phoned, confused about exactly where we were meeting up in the park. My daughter\u2019s favorite spot in Ithaca, the Stewart Park Pavilion was a place I thought I knew well.<\/span>
\n\u201cWhat bricks?\u201d I wailed into my cell phone, \u201cWhere?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRight there,\u201d my friend pointed proudly, when we finally caught up. A cozy corner I hadn\u2019t noticed before was paved with donated bricks, a fundraiser for the park. We stood together admiring the brick engraved with her son\u2019s name. Zacariah. She was telling me the story of how they\u2019d misspelled his name, when suddenly my eye was drawn to another brick. One brick away. Right there, it said, Marika Warden. My daughter. I stopped breathing. For a second I didn\u2019t understand what I was seeing. Someone, probably her father, had dedicated a brick to Marika. And one more brick away from that was a brick for my son who is still alive and thriving on the other side of the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

You wouldn\u2019t think a few little bricks could deliver such joy. But for a mom, the most wonderful thing is to know her children are loved and remembered. My friend and I stood there marveling at this new connection. \u201cIt\u2019s like we\u2019re neighbors,\u201d I said, \u201clike family.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That was just days ago. And here I am getting ready for my trip to the other side of the earth, to Australia. Responding to my posts, several bereaved mothers from Australia have been popping up on my Facebook pages and online support groups. We\u2019re making plans to meet up during my travels. Warmhearted women. They\u2019ve reached out across cyberspace sharing the stories of our children. Some of us watched the life wane out of our kids\u2019 eyes from addictions or cancers. Others got the dreaded phone call that ended their worlds. We were strangers. Until we shared our stories.<\/span><\/p>\n

And while I\u2019m counting the days until we meet up in person and discover things we have in common, I realize that bricks can hit you hard on the head or lead you to places you might never have found on your own. And maybe the coincidence of the brick at Stewart Park in Ithaca, New York, is a forerunner to what lies ahead in Australia. I have to wonder, how many bricks away from each other are we all?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I’m at the bricks. Just keep walking toward the pavilion. I want to show you my son’s brick,” a new friend said when I phoned, confused about exactly where we were meeting up in the park. My daughter’s favorite spot in Ithaca, the Stewart Park Pavilion was a place I thought I knew well. “What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1062],"tags":[213,1376,1371,1375,1373,1372,1377,1370,1374,1378],"class_list":["post-1794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1062","tag-bereaved-mothers","tag-brick-fundraiser","tag-coincidences","tag-engraved-bricks","tag-meeting-facebook-friends","tag-online-grief-group","tag-sharing-stories","tag-stewart-park-ithaca","tag-strangers-become-friends","tag-too-many-coincidences"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}