Moms pitch in after tragedy
The e-mail arrived the evening of Sept. 11, a somber day that ended with an alarming message from Tom Nelson. His wife, Nina, was missing. Their three children were gone, too. Tom sent the e-mail to Spokane Moms, Nina’s longtime support group.
The next morning, Tom e-mailed with the utterly sad news that Nina’s van had been hit by a train in Montana near the North Dakota border. The baby, 1-year-old Finn, was dead. Lianne, 5, was dead, too. Conor, 3, was in bad shape, his neck broken. Nina was alive, but her ribs were broken and her liver lacerated.
How exactly the accident happened and how Nina’s stress and despair played into the accident were unknown, and remain so.
“My first reaction was a deep, guttural sort of pain,” said Kelly Masjoan, fellow Spokane Moms member. “Immediate pain and regret for the babies who died. It’s morphed now into ‘How can we help Nina get to a place that helps her clear the fog and pain?’ “
Spokane Moms decided upon a yard sale, and it will take place Friday and Saturday in southeast Spokane. They expect it to be huge, because donations are streaming in.
Spokane Moms is a small group, with 10 to 12 regular members and 29 kids. The mothers range in age from 25 to 42; the kids are newborn to age 11. The women meet once a week on Wednesdays and e-mail all the time; their messages travel between the practical and the profound.
The “recruiting” message on their Web site reads: “Do you eat organic, recycle, cloth diaper, co-sleep, breastfeed or practice some aspects of attachment parenting? Are you too ‘weird’ for mainstream moms? Too ‘normal’ for the granola moms? Are you stuck in the middle with no one to relate to? Then this is your group! We are a diverse, loving, amazing, fun, loud, opinionated, oddball, wild, passionate and socially minded group of Mamas with an awesome bunch of kiddos.”
Nina joined the summer of 2002. The group walked through Nina’s challenges with her. All three children had physical problems and special needs. Conor was diagnosed with autism. Lianne, the oldest, was born three months premature, the day before Sept. 11, and Tom believes the five-year anniversary of that struggle prompted Nina’s long drive. A drive that ended when Nina fell asleep, and her van flew off the road to be hit by the train.
“We were there for her when she called us, but it’s hard to know what a person is going through unless you are in her situation,” said Leetah Gray, a Spokane Moms member. “She’s a very strong person.”
The Nelsons belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and church members have spread word of the sale through a wide-ranging e-mail network.
The Spokane Moms belong to a variety of faith traditions. At the yard sale, Mormons, Unitarians, Quakers, Protestants, agnostics and women who knit and craft religiously will come together to sell their wares.
Conor is in a St. Paul, Minn., hospital. Nina, released from the hospital, is at his side, along with Tom.
Meanwhile, the Spokane Moms here mourn the loss of Finn and Lianne. They fold and sort and price items together in gestures of lamentation and hope. They speak of Nina, Tom and Conor, wounded so deeply now, in the present tense. The women are preparing the way for this shattered family to come home and form a future together, piece by painful piece.