‘Our Moms Have To Talk’: Pocket Dial Connects Grieving Moms

Samantha Forrest, left, and Sam Francoeur, right, both died as young adults. A pocket dial phone call recently connected their two grieving mothers. (Elodie Reed/VPR)

Two women, living a couple dozen miles away from each other in Vermont, both lost a child in the last decade. Both children, oddly enough, were named Sam F. And both have mothers now connected through an inadvertent phone call.

Sam Francoeur was 20 when he died from an accidental overdose in 2013. His parents, Kris and Paul, still live in the Leicester home Sam grew up in. One of the hardest changes they had to make, Kris said, was shutting Sam’s cell phone off. They did it about a year after he died.

“It meant I was never going to get another phone call from him, from that number,” Kris said.

Another difficult change: Going through the holidays without Sam. The Francoeurs have a family tradition of taking down the Christmas tree the last day of the year, and Kris knew Dec. 31, 2019 was going to be a tough day.

Read the rest of the story at VPR’s website.