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Basketball games in the driveway, lively dinner conversations, wrestling matches in the living room, spending time with friends. These are some of the memories Nita Aasen has of raising sons Kevin, Erik, and David. It was a busy life with three boys. Their days were filled with school, sports, family activities, work, and dreams for the future.

As the boys grew older, Nita and her husband Paul saw their sons off to college, watched with anticipation and pride as they chose careers, and looked forward to their sons marrying and having children of their own.

Life was good … but in an instant their lives would be changed forever.

It was Thanksgiving Day 1994. Nita and Paul Aasen were on the road from their home in St. Peter, Minnesota heading to Chicago. They were going to visit their son Kevin, his wife Pam, and grandson Michael. Sons Erik and David were traveling to Chicago at the same time in a separate car behind their parents. They were typically traveling close enough that Paul could see Erik and David’s car clearly from his rear view mirror.

They were eastbound on Highway 14 near Rochester, Minnesota just 20 seconds from the road becoming a four-lane highway. Paul felt the car slide on a patch of frost and instinctively glanced in his rear view mirror to make sure the boys made it through safely. They didn’t. When he looked, he saw their car slide in front of a semi to be hit head-on.

Erik and David were killed instantly and simultaneously. Two young lives were gone.

Life’s natural order had just been disrupted; it was too soon for Erik and David to die. Erik was 27 and David 25. They had dreams, goals, and many more experiences ahead of them.

Erik was looking forward to graduating the next June from Mayo Health Sciences with a master’s degree in physical therapy. David was in his third year as a math teacher and tennis coach at Blue Earth Area High School. Both were on career paths that would make a difference in peoples’ lives. Both enjoyed sports, were committed to life long learning, and approached life’s challenges and opportunities with gusto. Tragically, their lives were cut short.

Nita and Paul were there when the accident happened. If there was any comfort in this, it was knowing first-hand that anything that could have been done, was done. There was no second-guessing the outcome of the accident. They had no chance to survive the crash.

At the scene Nita was screaming “You guys are fighters – you can fight this too – you guys never give up – Fight, Fight!” It was impossible for Nita to comprehend that this could actually happen.

Calling to tell Kevin about the accident was one of the hardest things they had to do. He was expecting to hear his family was running late for Thanksgiving. Instead, he learned his brothers had died. Nita, Paul, and Kevin were thrown into shock from their loss.

“Thank heaven for shock and for the outpouring of love and compassion from friends and the community,” Nita said. “It was impossible to even begin to comprehend the finality at that time and shock spared us the reality of the excruciating waves of soul-wrenching pain that seemed to permeate every cell over the ensuing weeks, months, and initial years. I fell completely apart on the first day but then shed very few tears for the first week or so. I made up for it big time later.”

One of the many calls of condolences the Aasens received came about a week after the funeral. It was from Don Bauman of Fairmont, Minnesota. He had never met the Aasens, but he had heard about the accident and their loss. Paul took the call, and Nita overheard their conversation. She was amazed at how Paul was talking so openly with a man they didn’t know. He was speaking about Erik and David, the accident, and how he was dealing with the loss. It was obvious Paul and Don had an immediate connection. Don, too, was a bereaved parent.

Don understood what Paul and Nita were going through and this allowed Paul to talk more freely than he had before. He told Paul about an organization called The Compassionate Friends that was available to them if and when they needed the support of other bereaved parents.

Paul and Nita did not forget Don’s call, but for the moment, they were exhausted from grief. They needed time to make sense of what had happened, and would try to get on with their lives. The reality was, their lives never would be the same.

“I went back to work about two weeks after the accident,” Nita said, “but I was still having a very difficult time. I didn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate, was losing weight, and I had to push myself to do anything. Then, after a few months went by, I still wasn’t getting over the loss. Worse, I started to feel like I couldn’t talk about Erik and David anymore. I needed to hear their names spoken. I needed to know that Erik and David weren’t forgotten.”

Nita felt like she must be grieving wrong. She wasn’t getting over it the way she felt society expected her to. She started reading every book she could about parents who had lost children to see if she was failing. She wasn’t. As a matter of fact, what she was going through was quite common for bereaved parents. In learning this, Nita was able to give herself permission to mourn.

“I started treating grief like a chronic illness,” Nita said. “Some days are better than others, but the pain is with you day in and day out.” By recognizing that her pain would never go away, the pressure Nita had felt to get over her grief was gone. There was no hurry anymore. Now she could take time to make sense of her new life and learn to live with as much grace and dignity as she could.

Her new life was quite different from what it had been. “I am an entirely different person,” Nita said. “I don’t sweat the small stuff any longer. Money is not important to me. I do not seek social interaction consisting primarily of small talk. I am more open to other spiritual/religious viewpoints and more willing to explore other possibilities about life and the afterlife than I was prior to the accident. And I am definitely more compassionate and sensitive to the grief of others.”

Two years after the accident, Nita started writing about her grief experience. She was looking for a way to make sense of things and bring meaning back into her life. After writing her first essay, she wondered if these feelings were unique to her or if others shared her feelings. “I wanted to get some honest feedback,” Nita said. “I recalled the phone call we had received from Don Bauman two years ago and, since Don had been on his grief journey for 20 years, I thought his perspective of time would be helpful and asked him to critique my initial ‘outside the box’ essay.”

Don read Nita’s article and called her immediately. “You are right on,” he told her. Then he asked if he could forward her essay to the national headquarters for The Compassionate Friends. She agreed that he could send it. The Compassionate Friends has a national magazine that is published quarterly called We Need Not Walk Alone. The magazine’s editor, Patricia Loder, read Nita’s article and asked if it could be their feature article in the next issue. This was an affirmation Nita had been longing for.

Since then, several of Nita’s writings have been included in The Compassionate Friends magazine and she is a regular contributor to Bereavement Magazine. Nita has also self-published her writings in a book called Living Still, Loving Always…Essays of a Bereaved Parent.

It has been 10 years since the accident and Nita is still searching for ways to make her life meaningful. Publishing her book was a big step for her. Helping society change their perception of grieving parents, and giving them permission to mourn is something she feels strongly about. But what is most important to Nita is keeping the memory of Erik and David alive.

“I do not have a future with Erik and David,” Nita said, “but they are still a part of our family. We always have two carnations on our table in their honor, their nieces and nephews are told stories about their uncles, and we relish any chance we get to hear stories about our boys from their friends and the people they knew. Asking a bereaved parent about their child who has died too soon is the best gift a person can give.”