A northern Ohio community is rallying around one family after a mother of three passed away over the weekend.
The original plan was for a few friends and family to make food for Ericka Reed’s husband and three kids until about March. Just a few days later, there are meals planned out until the summer.
“Wednesday morning, she was lying in bed speaking to my brother and he realized that she had stopped talking, that she wasn’t breathing,” said Ericka’s sister-in-law, Jennifer O’Boyre.
Ericka Reed battled asthma before. Just before the end of 2017, days on life support ended when Erika died, leaving her husband and three kids.
While they grieve, their friends and family have gotten to work. A small army of volunteers promising to cook three meals a week and clean the family’s house twice a month.
“A lot of high school friends on there, a lot of local people,” said Erin Byrne, who went to high school with Ericka’s husband, and offered to help clean the house one Saturday in January. “It’s filled out until June now, we’ve got dates in June.”
“The fact that we’ve got a community willing to take something off the list for the next several months so they don’t have to focus on that, and they can focus on healing and trying to deal with this loss, that’s very important,” said Byrne.
Ericka’s sister-in-law tells News 5 that in just the first few hours after she died, her organ donations already went to a few people who needed them.
