She pulled up to our house in her bright yellow VW Bug, the engine humming as if echoing her energy. The door flung open and out she bounded, her red hair tossed by the wind, a blur of color and light. She wore a light pink dress that day, and as she reached the front porch and stepped into Emily’s graduation open house, the two girls saw each other, and instantly melted into an embrace. Laughter, chatter, plans. That’s how I’ll always remember Rylee Skillman. Vibrant. Untamed. A free spirit with a flair for the creative, a sweetness in her smile, and a streak of wildness that mirrored my daughter’s own.
Emily loved Rylee. The feeling was mutual. And as a mother, I worried about the trouble they might find together. I wasn’t wrong to worry.
Years later, it was Rylee’s mother, Tammy, who I called when I was desperate to help my daughter. Emily’s 21st birthday was approaching, and I knew time was running out. I’d heard Rylee had gone through treatment and was doing better, so I reached out. Tammy and I talked for a long time, two mothers clinging to hope, trying to find the right path for our girls. When I hung up, I immediately began planning Emily’s intervention. I found a treatment center. I had a bed. I thought we might make it in time. But Emily died three days before we could intervene.
Tammy told me Rylee got a tattoo in remembrance of Emily, an olive branch, a symbol of peace. She said Rylee often talked about Emily, even years later. I think she carried the loss of her friend with her, just beneath the surface. You’d think the death of someone you loved would be enough to stop using drugs. But then you wouldn’t understand the ruthless grip today’s substances have on the brain, or how hard it is to escape once that grip takes hold–the brutal cycle of relapse and recovery that so many endure just to survive.
I didn’t know Rylee in the years after Emily’s funeral. I’d see Tammy now and then, and I’d ask. I wanted to believe she would make it through, would be the exception. But now I know those eight years were full of struggle—of fighting for sobriety, of slipping back, and fighting again. Until the last relapse, which took her life. There was no coming back.
My brain tries to make sense of it all. Why did Emily die when she did, while Rylee lived to fight this disease for so many more years, only to lose in the end? It’s a haunting comparison, because neither story ends without pain. Both are threaded with grief. Both leave families shattered.
After I heard about Rylee’s overdose, I found the few photos I had of the girls together from that graduation day in 2015. One in particular breaks my heart. Emily on one side, Rylee on the other, and Ellen standing between them, all smiles, all hope. Ellen, who is now a mother herself, an artist with a career and a partner and a future—has lost two of her high school friends to substance use disorder. She now volunteers for Emily’s Hope. She is carrying their memory forward the best she can.
I can still feel the joy in that photo. The boundless anticipation of young women stepping into adulthood, their whole lives ahead of them. Our families hoped for so much. We dreamed of the women they’d become. Now, seven years later, Rylee has joined Emily as another overdose statistic. But these two women were so much more than that. They were our worlds, our everything, for those who loved them. If it weren’t for drugs, we’d still have them—and all their creative energy—filling our lives with light every day.
Instead, I sit in the quiet ache of grief, inviting another mother to walk alongside me, to know she is not alone. We are the survivors, and we carry what remains of our daughters’ dreams in everything we do.
And still, part of me wonders if somewhere, beyond all this heartbreak, Emily and Rylee have found each other again. I like to think they’re side by side, no longer burdened by the pain this world placed on their shoulders. Just themselves again. Full of light, full of possibility. The way we remember them. The way they were always meant to be.
Faith, Hope & Courage,
Angela
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