'Worst moment of her life led to an opportunity to help others'

My wife ordered a footlocker for our 10-year-old granddaughter, Tahlia, last week in preparation for a two-week summer camp in Missouri.

I saw a picture of it today. It has wheels and is bright teal, a color found within the plumage of peacocks or on a robin’s egg. A month ago, it would have been unremarkable, but the moment I saw it, I felt a chill.

I recognized the color from a photo I had seen about the Guadalupe River flood in Texas.

Of all the photos I had seen of the flood, the one that spoke loudest to me showed footlockers lined up like coffins outside a building at Camp Mystic, where 27 people, almost all of them children, were swept to their deaths. Two of the trunks were teal.

When children die, they do not die alone. They take with them parts of those who loved them, who will never be whole again. That’s what the body count doesn’t reflect. Beyond the dead, injured and missing are the burdens of survival: the empty chair at the dinner table, the half-empty box of Fruit Loops in the cabinet, the dog waiting by the door.

After the flood, which killed at least 135 people, my wife couldn’t help herself. She called the camp in Missouri that our granddaughter was attending to ask questions about safety. She probably wasn’t the only one.

Grieving is a lonely process leaving us with questions we can’t answer: Why did it happen? Why was it my child who died? Why did I send her to camp? These questions will linger for lifetimes.

Molly Mae Culligan, 54, a peer support specialist in Eugene, lost her 5-year-old daughter, Elly Mae, in 2000. Born with cerebral palsy, Elly Mae died of complications after orthopedic surgery.

“I woke up every morning, and I had to remember again that she died, and I had to practice knowing that she died,” Culligan said. “Why did she die? Where did she go? Why, why, why, why. How is this even possible?”

The pain is perverse and invasive, she says. It settles in the heart like shattered glass, making it difficult to stand and maintain balance without doubling over in agony.

“I thought healing would be learning how not to miss her, but what healing was, was learning to let missing her be OK,” she said. “There’s a space left behind. We are bereaved forever. Forever. But it changes with time. The edges get softer.”

As a peer support specialist, Culligan is trained to use her personal experiences to help others navigate the grieving process. It might involve going on a walk while talking and listening to parents’ stories and concerns. She helps them set goals, find balance and handle day-to-day tasks.

She is someone who “gets it,” because she has followed the same path, fallen into the same darkness, cried the same tears.

Culligan works as a peer support specialist through Live. Grow. Share, a Eugene peer-run behavioral health organization. And she leads support groups through WellMama, a pregnancy and postmortem support organization. She also leads support groups on her own.

The worst moment of her life, she says, led her to an opportunity to help others.

Tahlia leaves for camp this week. She started packing the moment she received the footlocker. But because she’s not very good at it, her mom will go through it to make sure her name is on everything, then repack so that Tahlia doesn’t end up at camp with three shoes and one pair of underwear.

Plenty of adventure awaits her. She will learn about nature, community and herself, and, in time, I will look at her footlocker and be reminded of peacocks and robin’s eggs.