Paying Tribute to Kathleen Mau

On Thursday, February 11th, the world lost one of it's most loving souls. Kathleen Mau, the co-owner of Blue Box Cafe, sadly passed away. It's impossible to state the magnitude of her loss, not only just to us here at the Blue Box Cafe, but also to her friends, family, and everyone in the downtown Elgin community. 

Kathleen had always believed in what Blue Box could become. After leaving her job at Sears Corporate, Kathleen immediately went to work ensuring that Blue Box stayed successful, giving her heart, mind, and soul to our mission. Nothing brought her more joy than coming to work every single day. Whether it was making new recipes, coming up with events and activities, serving the lovely people of Elgin, or helping the members of our staff both personally and professionally, she was, and always will be, the spirit of everything we do. Blue Box Cafe was her and Chris’ pride and joy. For the past six years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with her, and more importantly, being her friend. Her loss to our store is absolutely devastating. She was our backbone, and carrying on without her might just be the greatest challenge we’ve ever encountered, even in the midst of a year full of difficulties we could have never imagined.

Going into 2021, the Cafe has faced it's fair share of challenges already. As we all know, the pandemic has made things incredibly hard for small businesses, and especially restaurants, like ours. We've done our best to survive these trying times while still providing you all with the best food and coffee Elgin has to offer, and Kathleen was the reason why. She, like the rest of us, was worried how we would survive, but Kathleen knew we would make it work. She had new ideas about how to evolve her business and carry us into the future, through the rest of the pandemic and beyond. With her tragic loss, we've all been so heartbroken that we weren't sure how to continue that. But, as Chris told our staff, "Kathleen would want us to keep going. She loved this place, and she loved all of you and everyone, and she wouldn't want us to stop, she'd want us to keep going and carry on."

So, that's what we're going to do. As of Monday, February 15th, we will be open to the public again, but there's a lot to be done to carry on without Kathleen. Because of the challenges we've faced this year, we've been putting off a number of projects that Kathleen had in mind to improve the cafe - necessary repairs, quality of life improvements, new machines, new kinds of food, etc. With Chris’ blessing and permission, I’ve started this GoFundMe to help Blue Box Cafe in Kathleen’s honor. The money raised by this campaign would go directly to helping Blue Box Cafe with these projects, and will be given to Chris Mau to help him achieve all that Kathleen would have wanted. Whatever you could provide would be appreciated more than words can state, and you'd be helping Kathleen's spirit live on by helping us to continue the work she loved so very much. 

We also recognize that times are tough for many, and if you cannot contribute financially, there are still other ways to pay tribute to her that would be incredibly appreciated. If you go to Chris Mau's Facebook page and leave a fond memory or story about Kathleen, that would go a very long way. The best way to pay tribute to her is to be happy, thankful, and appreciative of all she was and all she did. Big or small, we appreciate hearing those stories of how Kathleen touched the lives of so many, and it lifts our spirits every day to see the outpouring of love and support from those who she impacted.

From myself and everyone here at Blue Box Cafe, thank you. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and thank you for the incredible love and support you have all shown thus far.  We hope to be here to carry on in memory of Kathleen for years to come.