When two Saint Louis moms started culinary school together, they didn't know that personal sorrow would bind their lives together.
Tekisha Blue and Keisha Akers were connected by a counselor at Saint Louis Community College. "She said I got somebody I need you to meet, y'all so much like it don't make no sense," says Akers of the first time she met Blue outside one of the baking classrooms. They exchanged numbers. Akers says months later, that connection would become a lifeline as they both struggled with loss.
Last Fall Blue watched her daughter fight a losing battle against breast cancer as it spread throughout her body. "It was her throat, her lungs and in her stomach area. So it just kind of basically took over." She says her daughter wanted to be there to see her graduate. "She was like the life, like she had a heart of gold would do anything for anyone. She just, she just was a loving person at school."
Akers explains, no one knew the profound grief that Blue was living with. "I knew something had happened with her. I knew that she kind of took a step back for a second. She's a very private person."
Akers loss a month later was sudden, shocking, and public. Her teenage daughter, Alexandria Bell, was one of the victims of the central visual and performing arts high school shooting in October. "She was not, I would say the typical teenager," Acres rememers. "She was very family oriented. She was very bubbly, very much into dinosaurs, which is weird to me because how many teenagers, you know, now we're into dinosaurs. She loved dance, dance was her first passion."
Blue waited for the best time to minister to her classmate and friend. "I just wanted to give her her time with her family and everything and I would see her and talk to her." In January of this year, she found the opening to share. Acres needed books for a class, and as they met, Blue asked if she could tell her story. "And I told her, what had happened in my life and that it was just like a, like glue from that point, you know, with me being very private, I sometimes hold in my feelings because I wanna be there for everybody else. But I feel like I could be myself with her because she understood me. A lot of people can say, oh, I know what you're going through, but you have not experienced the pain and the heartache that you go through when you lose a child."
The two would text or call each other -- at all times of day -- throughout the semester. "It would be times where I would walk into the classroom, before class and I would walk in and she would just look at my face and she just walk up and hug me and they were like you, ok, I'm here. That, that was like my, my answer for everything I'm here," explains Acres.
Both women say there were many dark days when they felt they just couldn't continue their schooling as they dealt with their grief. "And I kept saying I just have to push my way through, just keep pushing, keep pushing," explains Blue, "keep praying because I have to be there for her as well."
Acres says she still struggles to get out of bed almost every day. "Her obituary is sitting right there next to the bed. Her school ID that she never ever got to use is pinned on top of my lamp shade. So it's like I try to surround myself with my baby and it's just like, how do I keep moving?"
Both moms keep going for each other and for the young people who remain.
Tekisha Blue and her husband are now raising their daughter's six children. "And I always just look at my grand babies and just as long as they're happy, me and grandpa are happy and I just, I asked my husband, I said, are we doing what we supposed to do? He's like absolutely!"
For Keisha Acres, it's her daughter's friends, "CVPA sitting right here on my shoulder and it's like these kids are watching you, these kids think you are everything. Everybody pretty much refers to me as Mama Keisha or mama. If I do quit, how many of them are gonna drop out of school?"
Most of all she pushes through to honor her Alex. "I hope I'm making you proud. Like I, I really hope I'm doing you justice. I really hope I'm not letting you down."
Both women earned their diplomas this spring. Acres hopes someday to own her own food truck and eventually become a family and consumer sciences teacher to help students learn to plan healthy meals. Blue runs community gardens, helping to fight insecurity. She works in the St. Louis Community College Child Development Laboratory Center.
