Grief shared is grief lessened

Something beautiful sprouted from tragedy here in Humboldt, and maybe that’s important to remember this holiday season as our nation reels from the horror of Newtown, Conn. Grief is the immediate focus. But eventually there’s remembrance without such crippling, unrelenting sorrow.

I say this because I met a pair of grieving Iowa mothers who haven’t let the heartbreak of their children’s deaths crush them — in part because they found each other and have clung to each other in their weakest moments.

Renae Dreyer and Candy Robinson probably wouldn’t have become such inseparable business partners and friends if not for the death of Dreyer’s 16-year-old daughter, Brooke, on Aug. 17, 2008, and the death of Robinson’s son, Jordan, also 16, less than a month later on Sept. 7, 2008.

Their children weren’t brutally murdered; these moms can’t imagine their grief and anger compounded by such malicious violence.

But Brooke’s and Jordan’s deaths were similar in that they were sudden. She was killed in a car accident in Humboldt while driving her Pontiac Bonneville.

He collapsed on the lawn of his sister’s home in Spirit Lake and never regained consciousness; autopsy results months later confirmed a rare, deadly infection.

After the death of a young child you end up “searching for your purpose in life,” Dreyer said. “You’re more intuitive to your surroundings — what’s important, what’s not, what your inner voice is saying.” Something as simple as a box of brownie mix can trigger what had been happy memories, and the tears flow.

People say, “Well, you have two other children,” as well-intended consolation, which only infuriates the grieving parents.

Yet despite their similar circumstances in a town of fewer than 5,000 people, Dreyer and Robinson had never met, other than to pass each other in the grocery store aisle.

Dreyer’s husband runs the tire store in town. Robinson owns a title company. Their two children were buried side by side in the local cemetery. But Dreyer was skeptical when a mutual friend suggested that she and Robinson commiserate in neighborly self-therapy.

“Why do we both want to sit around and be pissed off about what happened?” Dreyer wondered. No, these moms are not shrinking violets. They’re spirited women who romp through a full range of emotions. They cry on a daily basis, but also laugh.

Together they combine their hard-won empathy with a refreshing, off-color irreverence as the shopkeepers of Humboldt Engraving & Gifts, a laser-engraving service that crafts a steady stream of memorial items to help remember the dead.

They engrave granite, wood, leather, whatever material — for happy occasions as well as sad. They gabbed and bonded over a couple of beers when they first met and by December 2010 had opened their shop that they refer to as “the biz.”

Robinson talked about how she used to teeter on the verge of an emotional breakdown in a bathroom stall, madly texting Dreyer: “I can’t breathe.”

They burden each other to help bear the grief. Dreyer pointed to a pink ornament that dangled from the small Christmas tree in the middle of the store.

“That’s my daughter’s signature,” she said. The perky cursive handwriting, complete with a doodled heart, was lifted from the last Mother’s Day card that Dreyer received from her daughter. Another red ornament bore Jordan’s signature from a school paper written three days before his death.