Two Special Friendships; One Unique Bond
Two Special Friendships; One Unique Bond
Remembering Mama Jo
I didn’t expect to start with multiple personal posts, & I know I said the main purpose for this site is speaking biblical truth to cultural issues, but it’s really whatever the Lord places on my heart to write about. I have an “cultural issue” post coming in the next day or 2, but today I want to remember & honor one of the most important women in my life. 26 years ago today, I lost my “bonus” mom, Jo Neal. In my last post, I talked about my “twin” Meggie & her sister (my bonus big sis), Amy…Jo was their mama & she was my mom’s best friend. Meggie & I were just 20 years old when she died suddenly. It was the most painful loss I’d ever had at that point in my life. Six weeks later, still processing her death, I wrote a paper for my college English class about the friendships & unique bonds our families shared. I want to share you that paper in its entirety (with no edits) with you today. Here it is:
“Boy, you really got yourselves into trouble this time,” my dad harasses Jim. Jim and Joyce (we call her Jo) Neal just announced that they were having another baby. It is fall of 1977 in New Jersey. My dad and Jim are outside chopping wood and my dad has been harassing Jim for the last half-hour. Jim just smiles at him and lets him keep on talking. He knows that my dad will be getting what’s coming to him very soon. You see, little does my dad know that my mom is also pregnant. Both of these pregnancies were unplanned. Both of our parents already had 2 children each. My parents had Tim (age 7) and Erica (age 4.5). The Neals had Amy (age 6) and Heather Erin (age 3). So, Megan and I were their “OOPS’s”. Although they have told us many times that we were their “pleasant surprises”.
My parents met Jim and Jo in the late ‘60s through our mutual friends, Larry and Sharon Rathsam. My mom and Sharon were good friends in college. Jim and Larry worked in the same office in St. Louis. All 3 of the men worked at AT&T.
My parents didn’t really hook up with Jim and Jo again until many years later when they were both living in Kansas City. Then Jim got transferred to New Jersey. A few months later my dad also got transferred to the same office where Jim worked. That is where our families got really close. They did a lot together. Since both of their extended families were back in Midwest, they were their family away from home.
A few months after the announcement of the pregnancies, Jim got transferred to Tulsa, OK. Our families never lived in the same city again. But, I think the distance strengthened our friendship rather than our it. We valued the time we did have together a lot more.
Megan Neal was born on May 27, 1978. On June 8th, just 12 days later, I was born. At this time, no one really realized that God had already blesses us with a very special bond.
Eight months after I was born, my family moved to Cincinnati, OH. A few years later, the Neals moved to Independence, MO. We got to see them more often because we traveled to Missouri twice a year to visit my grandparents. We usually went to their house on our summer visits. We usually saw the Rathsams on our Christmas vacation. The Rathsams still lived in St. Louis and they had 2 children, Heather and Brian. All of our families kept in great touch and were still pretty close.
On our visits, Megan and I would have the best times together. We’d play in her basement or watch movies. We would always drink TONS of Dr. Pepper, our favorite drink.
Our moms always took Meg and me shopping for school clothes. For as long as I can remember, it was always just the 4 of us who went. Our moms would buy us all kinds of new clothes and a lot of them would be matching outfits.
I remember when I got a 10-speed bike for my 9th birthday. That summer we went to the Neals and I took my new bike with me. Megan didn’t have a 10-speed yet and insisted that she could ride it (even though she had never ridden one before). Finally, I let her ride it. She could barely touch the pedals, let alone the ground. She was on it for a minute or so and was coming up onto her driveway when she completely crashed and burned. She and the bike went flying into the air. Despite a few cuts and bruises, she was ok. To this day, that bike still has the battle scars from that wreck.
In August of 1989, we moved to Ozark, MO. They were still in Independence. While we were upset that we had to leave Cincinnati, we were excited that we were going to be living only 2.5 hours away from the Neals. We were so excited about that.
Not long after we got to Ozark, Jim announced he was being transferred to Atlanta, GA. They were going to leave the next summer. So, we made the most of the year we had. Tim and Amy were both going to MU for college so sometimes we’d meet up in Columbia and spend the weekend together. Megan and I got pretty close that year. We spent a lot of time together and had a lot of fun. We have some very funny stories from that year.
After they moved, Megan and I didn’t see each other that much. I’d see Jo every once in a while, when she would come and visit Amy at MU and we’d meet her up there. Megan and I only saw each other a couple of times until Amy’s wedding to Steve Burkholder in July of 1994. We had a great time. The wedding was in Columbia. My mom and Jo were up half the night before fixing Megan and Heather’s bridesmaid dresses. It was so funny because Megan and I had to make 3 different trips to the 24-hour grocery store to get stuff for our moms. We had a great time those few days. The Rathsam family came to the wedding and I think that was the first time our whole families had all been together. That’s weird, considering that we were all so close to each other.
I went to MU my freshman year. Amy and Steve were living in Columbia and expecting a baby in December. I saw them every once in a while. My mom was Amy’s “mom away from home”. Jo came to Columbia a month before the baby was born to help Amy out. It’s a good thing because David Chase Burkholder came earlier than expected on November 20, 1996. I remember getting the call from Jo telling me he’d been born. I went to see him after my class that evening. He was absolutely adorable. Since his 2 aunts lived so far away, I became his “Aunt Kristin”. Which seemed appropriate since his mom and aunts are like my sisters. I absolutely adored David. My 2nd semester at MU that year, I went to their house, sometimes 3 or 4 times a week, to see them and to watch David while they gave piano lessons. I became really attached to David. We’d always have the best time together.
That spring, Megan and her fiancé at the time came to visit and to see David for the first time. It was the first time I’d seen Megan in almost 3 years. Of course, we had a great time as if so much time hadn’t gone by.
I didn’t go back to MU the next year and Amy and Steve ended up moving down to Atlanta to be closer to her family. They decided to live with them for a while. I went down there to visit last March and had an absolutely wonderful time. Megan and I became closer than we’d ever been. That’s when we realized what a gift we had in our friendship and how much it was like our moms’. A funny thing we realized in looking at the pictures of us from the past was that Megan and I were always on the same side of each other. Even when we were babies lying on a blanket - she was on my left side. We thought that was funny because we had never planned it that way. It just turned out that way. We looked at every picture we had and all of them were like that.
We also realized, more than ever, how much Meg and I had in common. We’re practically carbon copies of each other. We like the same food, music, and movies. Even our attitudes are the same. Most of the time we know how the other one is thinking or feeling without saying a word. We just have that connection.
From that moment on, we promised each other that we would keep in better touch and at least see each other once a year. I ended up going back there in June. While I was there both times, Jo and I would have good heart to heart talks. I could talk to her about things that I couldn’t talk to my own mom about. She’s always been my 2nd mom. We talked about all kinds of things. The one thing all four of us realized were how much alike our friendships are and how special they are to us. I left very early in the morning on that trip. When I was leaving, Jo peaked out her bedroom door and said, “Bye Kris. I love you.” I told her I loved her too.
That was the last time I ever saw Jo alive. She died on October 19, 1998. The day before, my mom and I had spent the weekend in St. Louis. When we got home we noticed that there were 8 calls on the caller ID from the Neal’s area code. We knew something was wrong. Just 3 weeks before, Jo had suffered a mild stroke. She was recovering fine, but we were worried it’d happened again. My mom called their house and got the bad news. Jo had a cerebral hemorrhage and the doctors said there was nothing they could do. My mom and I were completely devastated. The first thing I thought about was Megan. If I was taking it so badly, how could she be dealing with it? Then I thought about my little nephew David. I was worried that he would never remember his Nana and how wonderful she was.
A little while later, Heather called to give us the details of everything that happened. When I asked her how Megan was doing, she said not well at all. I knew right then that I had to be with her. That’s all I wanted. I felt I had to be there to help her get through this. The next morning I went to work. My mom called me at 9:00 and told me they had just declared Jo brain-dead. I lost it then. I felt like I was losing my own mother. My mom told me that Megan wanted her to come down there. So, we never gave it a second thought. I called my professors at school, cleared it with my boss, and we flew out that night to Atlanta.
The rest of the day I was worried about how I could possibly help my best friend through all of this. I felt hopeless and helpless. I didn’t know if I had the strength to be there for Meg and my mom. When I was leaving, my friend Jake followed me down the stairs and asked me if he could pray with me. No one has ever done anything like that for me before. He took my hand and prayed for my family and me. From then on, I knew that I had the strength to get through it and help Megan too.
When we got there, I found out that she couldn’t get the nerve up to come home yet. When she did come home the next day, I went up to her room. We just lay on her bed crying uncontrollably with her in my arms. I knew then that there was nothing that I needed to say to her. She knew that I was there for her, and that just being there was enough.
That was definitely the hardest time of my entire life. I don’t think I will ever feel that kind of pain again (at least I hope not). I loved Jo very much. She was my other mom. I didn’t think it was possible, but we are closer to that family than we ever have been. Every time we talk to each other, we say “I love you”. When we were at the funeral, I told Meg that I would share my mom with her and she said she knew it. She said that my mom would be the one to help her plan her wedding and be a grandmother to her kids. And there is no other person Jo would want to do that. I know if the situations were reversed, she would’ve done the same for me.
There is nothing in this world that I wouldn’t do for Megan. It’s the same for our moms. She is my best friend in the entire world. I don’t know what I would do without her, which is why I can’t imagine what my mom has been going through. I love Megan with all of my heart. Meg and I have promised each other that we would carry on the friendship and bond that our mothers started, and one day we will pass it on to our own daughters.
And we have done that. Although I don’t have any children, our bond has only strengthened throughout the years and I am to her kids what her mom was to me. We have a legacy to keep that our mothers passed on to us and I think we’ve done well to honor and keep it.
I want to close with Jo in her own words. She wrote me a letter on that last visit in June 1998…I cherish that letter & I read her words to me every October 19th or whenever I’m missing her extra. Here is part of what she wrote to me:
You are a delight…I always enjoy being around you and I can tell how great it has been for Megan. Wish you two could be together more often, but stop and think of all the people you have both been with year in and year out but yet you two have this close bond based on one week a year for 20 years! Pretty remarkable, huh? And as I am with your mother, I wish we could be together more, but because we know we don’t get to be together often, we always make the most of the time we have. And when I am away from her, even if we haven’t talked, I always feel such a connection. Even the things I buy when I’m with her always seem to be my favorites and I think, “I got this when Gayle & I were …”
I love you and miss you, Mama Jo. Every single day.