NANCY FARRIS PARTIDA: A MOTHER’S GRIEF IN GOODLAND

My high school counselor, Nancy Farris Partida, opens up about the night her teenage daughter Laramie died, what those first hours were like, and the long stretch of life that came after.

Nancy sat in a chair by her fireplace, wrapped in a light purple sweater with a white shirt collar peeking out at the neck. Behind her, the mantle was lined with family photos and pieces of art, quiet reminders of her past. The screen between us seemed to disappear, and in my mind, I was back in my hometown.

She was just as I remembered her from high school, back when she worked as a counselor in Goodland. She held that role for nearly twenty years. Nancy made it easy to let your guard down. She was funny and didn’t have much of a filter. She might let a curse word slip or say something she shouldn’t. The jangle of her jewelry filled the air before her words did. Nothing about her felt stiff, and being around her made you soften up a bit too.

She worked with students, guiding them through some of the hardest years of their lives. But on a Friday night in 2016, her life changed forever.

"I'm talking with Jeremy today about my daughter Laramie," she began. "Laramie was nineteen and a half when she got killed. She was a burst of sunshine wherever she went. It still brings back so many memories, and it just hurts so bad that I lost her the way that I did.”

That evening, Nancy was working late, helping a student whose home life had become unsafe. She was arranging for social services to step in and make sure the student had a place to stay that weekend.

"Here it is, seven o'clock at night, and we're calling social services, trying to get this kid a place to stay. We did end up getting it all taken care of." The next morning, Nancy found out that while she was busy doing her job, her daughter was on the road, heading south toward a football game in Oklahoma. 

She never made it.

"She was thirteen miles north of her destination and was killed right beside a feedlot down there," Nancy said. "Her dad had to tell me the next day that Laramie had perished in the crash."

She remembers the call clearly. The words sank into her bones. “I immediately got in my car and went up to my mom's house and sat there with her.”

When she got home, Nancy stepped into Laramie’s room and paused in heartbreak. It was unusually tidy. Everything in place and nothing left out. “I couldn't believe everything that was put away,” she said. “Like she knew something was going to happen.”

The days that followed blurred together. “Time does stand still. I didn't even realize that two weeks had gone by. It was so slow and day to day, and it was really hard to get through it at all.”

The pain was still there, just under the surface. You could see it in Nancy. It reminded me of my grandma after her losses, the deep kind of hurt you can’t sweet talk away. It just lives with you. Some days it crushes you. Other days, it just nags at the edges. But it never leaves. It becomes part of you. There’s nothing natural about losing someone that close. Your mind fights it and refuses to believe they’re really gone. 

Over the years, Nancy has become familiar with loss and grief. Her husband Joe passed in 2021 after a long illness. He had loved and raised Laramie as his own. “Joe was a main part of her life as well. He always knew how to help me figure out what I needed, right when I needed it.” 

I asked what she’d say to someone going through loss like hers. “If you don't want to be around people, don't feel like you have to put on a show or be somebody else. Go somewhere where you can have some quiet time. I used to go down to the river at 10:30 or 11 at night because I couldn't go to sleep.”

Grief filled the spaces. In silence, in small habits, and sometimes, through the speakers.

“They played ‘Honky Tonk’ by Trace Adkins at her funeral and it always made me laugh, because they were pushing her casket, playing, ‘Here she comes, here she comes now.’ She loved to dance, and it was part of her life.”

I asked what helped, what really worked when others tried to be there for her.

“Talking about her,” she said. “People are afraid to talk to somebody that's grieving, but that's the best thing you can do. Just listen to them.” She recalled the funeral that was held at the Max Jones Fieldhouse and the overwhelming turnout. “There were close to 1,500 people there, and they had such kind things to say about her. You don't hear that if a person's still alive.”

Laramie’s room stayed mostly untouched for years. It wasn’t until recently that Nancy was able to pack things up.

“She still had things in her bedroom, already boxed up after a fire elsewhere in the house. They had to put everything away and clean it all. I guess because it had been nine years since it happened, I was ready.”

Still, her presence lingers in the background.

“She was so artistic in everything she did. And if she didn't like what she made, she'd tear it up because her stuff had to be perfect.”

Nancy didn’t draw for years after the accident. “I was so depressed from it,” she said. “Then I thought, I knew Laramie would want me to pick it up again.”

Now, she sells prints, paintings, and photographs. One photo of a longhorn steer, in particular, became a symbol of her healing.

“Laramie and I ended up going north of Oakley one day and happened to run into these longhorn cattle. I made at least 35 enlargements of the photo we took of that cow. It was a good way to help me relieve my stress and to know that there's still good in the world.”

Even now, there are things that give her pause. “It’s a photo of Lar, looking off into the distance,” she said, talking about the image engraved on her daughter’s headstone. “My mom said, why would you not put a picture of her face there? And I said, because that's who Laramie was, and that's the way we wanted to remember her.”

The message she hopes people take away from her story is simple:

“You’ve got to remember that there still is a world of good out there. Some days you wonder why you're even alive, but you can look at the small things. Just knowing that there's still good in this world helps. And if Laramie was here, I know she'd be part of that too.”

We sat for a long time after the interview ended. What stuck with me most was how simple it really was. The loss. The pain. Sometimes it just hurts. There’s no way around it, and not much to say that makes it better. You almost wish there were some bigger answer. Some mystery to untangle. But there isn’t.

Someone is gone. Someone is hurting. And the world keeps going. You move forward because you have to. What you’re left with are the memories. The good ones, the hard ones, all of them. 

As hard as it was, I think talking about it helped. Even through the tears, I could feel that. Grief can be isolating, and silence only makes it worse. A lot of times we want to talk about the people we’ve lost because we’re already thinking about them anyway. And in a way, they live on through that. Through us. Through the stories we keep telling.

Before we hung up, she wiped her eyes, told me she loved me, and we ended the call.

-Jeremy Mills