BAKER - In a tucked-away garden in Baker, the sound of laughter echoes, but for a group of mothers and grandmothers, some days it's hard to laugh.

The group of five women sits at a neatly set table with tea, fruit, and sandwiches. While they eat and chat about work and life, the conversation and mood shift. Each has a son or grandson who has been killed by gun violence, and none of their cases have been solved.

"It's a club no one wants to join," Liz Robinson, mother of Louis Robinson, said.

Robinson says her son was an Army veteran who was excited to come home to Baton Rouge. In 2018, at 29, he was shot and killed.

Carolyn Williams' son died 18 years ago, and she says when she sees others experiencing gun violence, it takes her back to the moments in her home when she found out her son Chad Williams died. She remembers Chad's friends crying in the street when they found out he was gone. As a mother, she says the pain is amplified.

"We have to put on this facade that we have it all together," Williams said.

Two weeks ago, a shooting happened near her home, and she says all of the grief returned.

"I didn't want to take a shower," Williams said. "I didn't want to get out of bed. I stayed in bed. I cried."

Two years ago, Yawanna Fillmore's son Dy'lan was killed in his car. Dy'lan had left their home at night to work on music he was recording. When he didn't return home the next morning, his family panicked and tracked his cellphone. Dy'lan's father was the one who found him in his car.

"It's been a journey," Fillmore said. "Dy'lan graduated from LSU on December 14 and was taken away from us 16 days later. He was a ball of energy."

As the group sits together, with lunch and drinks in hand, they continue to support each other through heartache.

Tye Tolliver is the mother of Devin Page Jr., a 3-year-old who was shot in 2022 while he slept. Tolliver says she doesn't stop thinking about what happened. She won't rest until there's justice.

"This takes us 85% of my brain," Toliver said. "When people are making wrong and irrational decisions, they don't know the pain that it puts on other people and families. [Families] have to live the rest of their days out. Here we are three years later, still dealing with the same stuff."

It's a feeling everyone in the group understands.

"Every mother who's lost a child knows what we're going through," Williams said.

In the evening, the group held a night of remembrance at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center on Gus Young Ave.