by Savanna Carlsen

Created on: June 05, 2008

When I first met Skyler Anne at age two, she was a little spit fire of a girl. With her big blue eyes and thick brown hair, she had her mom and dad wrapped around her little finger. I met their family through her older brother, then 14, who was friends with our oldest son. They ended up on the same baseball team together. Skyler was just a year younger than our daughter and our families became quick friends. We spent a week together in Kansas that year when our boys' baseball team was invited to a national tournament.

A couple years passed and Skyler was growing up, we'd run into each other every now and then and attempt to get together. Life gets busy and you try to make time for your friends when you can. The last time I remember seeing Skyler was that Christmas of 2006. We ran into them at a winterfest our city puts on ever year. She was talking up a storm all bundled up in her coat, complete with hat and gloves. We made promises of getting together soon. My daughter invited Skyler to her 5th birthday party that March. They had marked the dates wrong and missed the party, but no big deal, we promised get the girls together real soon.

The morning of April 30, 2007 was a typical one. The weather was fairly warm, and I got all the kids off to school and ran up to get myself a pedicure. I hadn't heard the messages going off on my phone, due to it being buried in my purse. I would find out later that my son had text me earlier that morning about the incident I was just about to hear about. As I walked out of the nail shop, my phone rang and a friend called me to ask if I heard about our friends daughter, Skyler. She told me she had died the night before. I was in complete and utter shock. I did not believe what she was telling me. I jumped in the car and drove home as fast as I could, tears spilling down my cheeks. It has to be some sort of mistake, I thought to myself. There is no way that Skyler is gone, no way at all. I called a dear friend, Lynda, who is mutual friends with Skyler's family and mine, and I knew right away when I heard her voice answer the phone that something had indeed happened.

The rest of that day is quite a blur of sadness. I went straight over to their house, which was already packed with mourners. Skyler's mom was upstairs lying down, heavily medicated. Seeing the pain she was in was hardly tolerable. It was such confusion as to what happened and why. I truly didn't think they would or could ever make it through this terrible disaster.

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