Long before there was The Sheridan Gorman Foundation, long before there was Sheridan’s Bench, there was a very chatty, very high-energy, very joyful little girl who, at only five years old, had absolutely no idea she was already showing us exactly who she was going to be.

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Sheridan was one of those children who seemed to arrive everywhere at full volume and full heart. She was always smiling. Always laughing. Always asking questions. So many questions lol…

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Sheridan was curious about absolutely everything — and absolutely everyone. She talked to adults. She talked to children. She talked to strangers. She talked to the person in front of us in line at the grocery store. She talked to the person behind us in line at the grocery store. I’m fairly certain there were occasions when I walked away knowing less about the stranger than Sheridan did.

 

If you stood still near her long enough, chances were pretty good Sheridan was going to introduce herself, ask you six questions, tell you three stories, compliment something you were wearing, explain something completely unrelated, and somehow know your life history before you walked away. Which is why, when it came time for her kindergarten parent-teacher conference, I was really nervous. Because every mother of a child with a very big personality knows that particular anxiety. You absolutely adore every loud, funny, curious, slightly-too-much thing about your child — while simultaneously walking into that conference thinking, Please tell me the teacher finds this charming.

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Because I knew my kid. There was at least a reasonable chance I was about to hear that my daughter spent too much time talking, asking questions, making friends, laughing, socializing, helping somebody with something they had not asked her to help with, or doing just about anything other than sitting quietly when she was supposed to.

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Quiet was never really Sheridan’s spiritual gift.

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So I sat down across from her teacher at one of those teeny-tiny kindergarten tables that no adult human body was ever intended to occupy. You know the ones. Your knees are practically beside your ears, you are sitting on a chair designed for a person who weighs forty pounds, and somehow this is the setting where another grown woman is about to evaluate your parenting.

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And just to add a completely unnecessary extra layer of maternal panic, Sheridan’s kindergarten teacher happened to be a longtime friend of my husband Tom from high school. She is — and always has been — one of the sweetest people you could ever meet, a true treasure in our lives and in the lives of every child lucky enough to have been in her classroom. None of which helped me in that moment. Because somehow my brain had decided this was no longer a simple kindergarten conference. This was now a referendum on the entire Gorman family.

 

Sheridan was our five-year-old ambassador, Tom’s reputation was somehow on the line, and I was sitting there thinking, Please, sweet Jesus, let this child have represented us well. And please let Tom have behaved himself in high school because apparently that feels relevant now too...

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I anxiously asked with bated breath, “So… how’s my Sheridan?”

 

Her teacher paused.

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She had these beautiful, bright, flashing eyes, and she looked at me for what was probably only ten seconds, but when you are a nervous mother waiting to hear what your five-year-old has been up to, ten seconds is approximately nine and a half seconds too long.

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She had this funny little half-smile on her face.

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And I thought, Well, that doesn’t look too promising.

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Here it comes... Your Sheridan talks too much. Your Sheridan has too much energy. Your Sheridan asks too many questions. Your Sheridan has apparently decided kindergarten is primarily a social organization with occasional academic interruptions.

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But instead, she looked at me and said, “I only have one thing to say to you.”

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Ughhhh....My stomach fell.  Because no mother in the history of parent-teacher conferences has ever heard "I only have one thing to say to you" and thought, Oh good. This is definitely going somewhere wonderful.

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Then she said: “Your Sheridan stalks the buddy bench.”

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I just blankly stared at her, totally confused.

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There were several words in that sentence I understood individually. Together, not so much.

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And I certainly did not love that the verb describing my kindergartner’s playground behavior was stalks.

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So I asked, “What is a buddy bench?” And then, because again — stalks — I followed up with the question I thought any reasonable mother would ask: “And… is this a good thing or a bad thing?”

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Her teacher laughed and said, “It is a BEAUTIFUL thing.”

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And then she explained: There was a bench in the play yard where a child could sit if they were feeling lonely, left out, shy, or simply had no one to play with. Then the other children had been taught that if they saw someone sitting there, they should go over. Say hello. Invite them to play. Make sure they weren’t alone.

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It was such a simple idea - yet sooooooo striking in spirit.

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And apparently, Sheridan had taken this assignment with the seriousness of a five-year-old Secret Service agent.

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Her teacher told me Sheridan had essentially become the guardian of that bench. She watched it. Constantly.

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If someone sat down, Sheridan noticed. Immediately.

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Apparently there was no leisurely finishing whatever game she was playing first. No committee meeting. No thoughtful period of observation.

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If someone was on the bench, Sheridan was on the job. Sheridan was moving. She would bee-line over to them before both bum cheeks had fully rested on that bench and she would talk to them — because of course she talked to them lol. 

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This was Sheridan. Silence was not going to be part of the rescue operation.

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She asked questions. She made them laugh. She grabbed them by the hand and pulled them over to the swings or brought them into whatever she and her friends were doing.

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Again and again and again.

 

She watched that bench because she knew what it meant when someone was sitting there. Someone needed somebody.

And Sheridan wanted to be that somebody.

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If someone felt invisible, Sheridan saw them.

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And sitting there at that ridiculous miniature toddler-sized table, something shifted in me.

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All the things I had occasionally worried might be “too much” about my daughter suddenly looked completely different. All that talking. All those questions. All that energy. That enormous personality. That inability to enter a room quietly. That instinct to know everybody, talk to everybody and somehow become emotionally involved in the lives of people she had known for eleven minutes...She was using every bit of it to make sure another little child did not feel alone!

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The qualities I sometimes wondered whether the world might ask her to tone down were the exact qualities she was using to brighten someone else’s world.

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That was Sheridan.  She was one of those blessed souls that really was innately good. 

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And the truth is, that little girl who stalked the buddy bench was exactly who Sheridan remained until the day she died.

 

Again, she was not a perfect person. She was a teenager, after all lol! And I was her mother, so I can personally provide supporting documentation testifying to her many imperfections.  

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Yes, there were occasional eye rolls. There was a wide array of teenage moods. There were clothes on floors that apparently became invisible the moment they left her body. There were moments when I wondered whether the same child who could detect a lonely student from fifty yards away had somehow lost the ability to detect a cereal bowl sitting six inches from the dishwasher. 

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Sheridan was wonderfully, maddeningly, beautifully flawed. But she had an almost perfect heart.

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She cared deeply. She noticed people. She loved hard. And she cheered for them even harder. She had an instinct for the person who needed a friend, the person who needed cheering up, the person who needed to be included. And regardless of age, that never left her.

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Even during the very short time she was at Loyola University Chicago — less than one year — Sheridan had already made an extraordinary impact. She had built friendships. She had become part of a community. She had made people laugh. She had made people feel loved. She had left an imprint on people in a matter of months.

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That was Sheridan’s gift.

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She made people feel seen.

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And when she loved you, you knew it.