By Katherine Shaver
On a summer day last year, Padma Soundararajan lost most of her family in a head-on collision in India. In an instant, her parents and two teenage sisters were gone.
The only survivors of the crash -- Soundararajan hadn't joined the trip -- were two younger brothers. One has severe cerebral palsy; the other, autism.
Soundararajan, now 30, moved out of the hip D.C. apartment she shared with friends and moved back to her family's Gaithersburg house to raise Pavan, now 21, and Sairam, now 14. Even with help from close friends and the Washington area's tight-knit Indian community, she said, she suddenly felt old beyond her years -- and alone.
In March, Sairam's therapist office called. Another young woman just a few miles away in Germantown had begun grief counseling after losing her mother to kidney failure. She, too, was raising an autistic brother. She, too, felt isolated. Would Soundararajan like to meet her?
Almost immediately, Soundararajan said, she and Erica Moseley, now 27, forged a special friendship. Both appreciate what they say no one else can: How they have yet to fully grieve because they're too busy trying to get through each day. How they cringe at people saying they're "just like a mother" when they feel they can never measure up to the mothers they lost. How deeply they miss not only their loved ones but also the carefree, young life that gave way to the demands of raising disabled siblings and the responsibilities of middle-age adulthood.
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