By Stacey Wiebe
SWIEBE@MERCEDSUN-STAR.COM

Last Updated: May 21, 2004, 07:15:19 AM PDT

A car slows to a stop to get a good look at a pair of crosses that thrust skyward from a plot of dirt and shrubs along Gerard Avenue.

The driver rolls down the window and sticks his head out so the two women standing at the roadside can hear him.

"What are those for?" he asks, pointing at the crosses. "Did someone die here?"

"Yes," one of the women says. "There was a drag racing accident. ... They were our children."

With a respectful nod, the driver takes off -- but Tricia Lencioni and Sheryl McAllister remain standing, like always.

"A lot of people stop and ask," Lencioni, 44, says. "We're always here."

Lencioni and McAllister are linked by tragedy, but they're ready to be linked by something more. Almost a full year since their children died, the pair who will always mourn the loss say they're ready to help others deal with grief.

"There's really nowhere to go to talk," said McAllister, 43. "I see a counselor, but it's different than talking to someone who's gone through it."

On June 26, Lencioni's son, Aaron Fraire, and McAllister's daughter, Desiree McAllister, were passengers in a 1995 Honda Civic that struck a power pole and a wall before skidding to a tangled stop on Gerard Avenue.

Two Merced men are currently serving jail time for their involvement in the crash and subsequent deaths.

Fraire was 19, just a few weeks away from turning 20.

McAllister was 18.

"If I could change places with him, I would have," Lencioni says of her son.

Instead, the mothers have found another way to handle the loss.

Tuesday, Lencioni and McAllister will host their first meeting of the Merced Mothers In Sympathy & Support. Their meetings will focus on those who have lost older children.

MISS, which also welcomes fathers, is a nonprofit, volunteer-based organization committed to providing emergency peer support to families in crisis after the deaths of babies or older children from any cause, said Kim Lotz, MISS facilitator.

The new group -- which will not replace an existing group that focuses on the deaths of younger children -- is meant to be a safe place where parents who have lost older children can speak to others with similar stories.

"I think a lot of people cover it (their pain) up because they feel it's what they're supposed to do," says Lencioni, who added that she still cries every day -- sometimes in the shower, sometimes in bed, sometimes elsewhere.

"If someone else approaches you and says they know how you felt when you lost a child, you connect."

McAllister she expects to see sporadic attendance and parents who may want to sit and listen without speaking up.

"We want to give everyone a safe place to talk," she said. "Sometimes I still have a hard time explaining what I'm feeling."

And sometimes, she says, it's still hard to get out of bed.

"People need to know that the feelings come and go, they roll," she says. "It's never like, 'Okay, I'm all better.' "

Both women are quick to point out that they love telling funny, happy stories about the days when their children were beside them.

After all, Lencioni says, she still looks after Aaron's dog, Bubba, who was found sleeping one night at the scene of the accident -- less than a mile from Lencioni's home.

"I want to talk about my child all the time," she says.

McAllister said her view of death has changed completely, and that she finds she often has more questions than answers.

"Today, I was sad, I felt like Desiree was encouraging me," she says. "It was like she was saying, 'Come on, Mom.' "

The first meeting of Merced's MISS group for the parents of older children will take place at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the office of Unity Church, 305 West 26th St. For more information, call Lencioni at 384-7381, or McAllister at 383-3392.