Trusting the threads

On grief, friendship, and the unseen helpers who connect us, still

A former colleague and dear friend texted me this spring. She was applying for an executive assistant position at an independent school near her home.

I’ve known her since before she had kids. She’s a mother of two now, the youngest still nursing, and she was putting herself out there for a leadership role. I was proud of her. We set up some calls to prepare for the interview.

As we talked, something about the school's name rang a bell for me.

I checked LinkedIn. And there it was: another dear friend of mine from summer camp is a longtime teacher at this school.

I reached out. She agreed to talk immediately. And on the phone, she gave me exactly the kind of information you can’t get from a job description — the current climate, the leadership dynamics, what the role actually looks like from the inside.

Here’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.

Partway through the call, I realized why this connection felt so charged.

My camp friend’s first job out of college was at a school in Philadelphia where my dear friend Caroline’s mother, Gail, was the executive assistant to the head of school. The same role my client was applying for.

Gail and my camp friend worked together. They were close. And then Gail got sick. Cancer. She held it off for years, but eventually died too young. We all grieved.

And then Caroline got sick, too — brain cancer. Just months after giving birth to her second child.

When Caroline was dying, this camp friend became involved in our circle of care, in part because of her love for Caroline, and in part, I think, because of her loyalty to Gail. That’s how she and I became close. Through Caroline. Through Gail.

And now, years later, that very friendship — forged in grief and in love — was the reason I could pick up the phone and get trusted, insider perspective on a role that is, as it happens, the exact role Gail once held.

I sat with that for a long time after I hung up.

Caroline. Gail. A friendship born from losing them. A phone call that wouldn’t have happened without that loss. A role — Gail’s role — opening up at the exact moment someone I loved needed it.

I don’t need to assign credit or explain the mechanism. I just know what I felt — that something larger than my LinkedIn search was at work.

A little tap from Caroline and Gail, as if to say: we’re still here. Still helping.

🕊️

SAM

SAM and Caroline, age 18