Approaching his first Mother’s Day without his mother, Casey MacNiven came up with an idea – help other mothers, in her memory.
“Last September, my mom (Annette MacNiven) took her own life, and it’s been a series of ups and downs for me since then,” he said. “So, I was trying to do something special to remember her. In a sense, it was therapy for me.”
MacNiven, the owner of Squeegee Monkey Window Washing, selected mothers who either deserved it or needed help. He and a crew of nine visited three homes on the weekend of May 2-3.
“It was a surprise,” MacNiven said. “I told them I was coming, but they didn’t know why, and they didn’t know I was bringing all these people.”
The surprise began when he knocked on the door with a card and a rose.
Among the crew was Darci Olsen of Hearts to Hands Massage Therapy, who brought her massage chair and gave massages to the moms while the rest washed windows, cleaned gutters and hard-to-reach places, repaired screens, power-washed houses and did yardwork.
“I met Darci at the Suicide Survivors Day in November,” MacNiven said. “She had lost someone close to suicide, too.”
The group brought a truck full of window-washing equipment, two lawn mowers, one edge trimmer, one pressure washer, two vacuums, a wheelbarrow, a couple of bags of tools, garbage bags and a “plethora of ladders,” he said.
How did they select the recipients of their labors?
“My wife was the first to join the Durango Moms and Kids Play Group,” MacNiven said. “We selected one mom from that group because she was so proactive at helping other moms, and we felt like she deserved recognition for that.”
The other two women selected were a grandmother whose own mother had died two days earlier and a single mother and teacher who had just bought her own home.
“One said she had a breakdown a few days earlier because she was just overwhelmed,” he said.
MacNiven hopes others might be inspired to reach out in a similar way.
“There were tears everywhere we went,” he said. “It was an emotional day for us all, and the love was real.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
