Alberta farm community gathers to send prayers, balloons to their angels

The people in Withrow have no doubts about heaven.

It is, to them, as certain as the prairie wind that gusts across theircanola fields, as constant as the wide blue sky, as dependable as a good dog, or a neighbour's kindness.

There are three new angels gone to heaven this week.

One of them left her hat behind.

On Sunday, the people in this tiny Alberta community sent prayers to those angels, along with hundreds of brightly coloured balloons.

They know in their hearts the Bott sisters were watching. And that made the burden of their sorrow a little easier to bear.

"The hole in your heart isn't so big anymore," said Adelita Studer, with wisdom well beyond her years.

She lives just down the road from the Bott family farm, and was a close friend of all three sisters - Catie, 13, and Dara and Jana, the 11-year-old twins.

It has been five days now since the sisters smothered to death under a load of canola seed in the back of a farm truck.

The girls grew up surrounded by green fields and true-blue friends, and on Sunday, as they do every Sunday, those friends gathered at the Withrow Gospel Mission Churchto sing and pray and help each other through the hardest of hard times.

Crystal Meronowich helped organize the balloon release. Like many, she knew the Bott family from church.

"They were our rock three years ago," she said, "when my mother-in-law passed away. In a time of tragedy, you don't know how to help. You just want to be there for the family."

And so they came, and gathered outside the church, and spoke in hushed voices, and waited while the balloons, reds and greens, blues and pinks, were handed out. Someone picked up a guitar. Soon, softly, people began to sing:

"I'll fly away, oh glory,

I'll fly away (in the morning)

When I die, by and by

"I'll fly away."

Not long after, a makeshift group of musicians, on fiddles and guitars, played a heartfelt rendition of the old hymn How Great Thou Art.

Then it was time for the balloons to soar into the sky.

Adelita noticed that a green one, Catie's favourite colour, was the first to lift off. That was fitting, she said, because Catie was the oldest.

"It doesn't feel so empty now," she said. "And I'm sure the girls were watching."

The people around her felt much the same way, with the same kind of certainty.

"They would have been looking down, just amazed at how many people came together around their church," said Meronowich. "This was their second home. It would have made their hearts so happy, I think, to see so many people."

Asked to sum up her feelings over the past few days, she said: "I'm a mom of four. And I couldn't imagine ," the words then caught in her throat, " going from four to one.

"I just couldn't imagine."

Baillie Burns, her red hair shining in the sun, was a close friend of the Bott girls. They used to all ride bikes together, from farm to farm, along the dusty country roads.

"It was actually really hard for me," she said of Sunday's ceremony. "But I made it through."

Inside the church, a memory table had been set up, with some of the Bott sisters' treasured possessions displayed on top.

"The hat that's on there," Baillee said. "It was practically glued to Catie's head. She never took it off. She wore it to bed."

What they did on Sunday, the people in Withrow say, was really just the start of the healing.

They know the Bott family will need their support tomorrow, too, and for years and years to come.

Emma Downey said getting together that way made things a little bit easier for everyone.

"We don't feel like they're gone," she said. "Because we know that we will see them again."