Time from the Past

August 11, 1989

To most people this is just another day, but to me the world changed that day.  I was living in Jasper at the time working.  (Jasper is about a 6 hour drive from where I was living with my parents)  Since I was only 19 years old and just working there for the summer I was living in housing for the company I was working for...it is what most people would refer to as a bachelor suite, it had a kitchen, a bathroom and a large room that housed two beds and dressers...nothing special.  Anything extra you had you had to bring yourself...I didn't have much and most definetly didn't have a phone, if you wanted to call your family you had to go down to the lobby.  I had no TV just a radio that since we were in the middle of the mountains didn't get the greatest reception...for all intents and purposes I was cut off from the rest of the world...and for most days this was a great thing...but not on this day.  

My mother called the main office of the company that I worked for and left a message with my best friend at the time that I needed to call home right away it was important...well my best friend was far from the best friend and she waited until after her shift to come and tell me that I needed to call home.  Fortunately for me I was secluded so I didn't hear the news before it had been on the radio or anything like that...there had been a car accident.  A woman had ran a stop sign and hit another car headed through the intersection square on, causing the vehicles to spin around each other and flip and colide together in a chunk of metal.  These words would be ones I would never forget, almost 20 years later I can still see the pictures from the newspaper, hear the reports on the news, hear the things that people were saying about what happened.  Five people dead, a couple injured including a 6 month old baby...I had to come home now, it was my sister-in-law!

My brother was a bad boy...who am I kidding he still is...but at that time he was 17 years old and had a 6 month old with his 18 1/2 year old girlfriend.  One day they were together and living with my parents, the next with her mother, then they were apart...it was a crazy relationship but she had been part of the family for awhile. I loved this girl, she was my age and when my best friend (yes the afore mentioned friend) moved away the year before I had become friends with my sister-in-law and I was the first one to find out that she was pregnant.  She hid the pregnancy from her mother for months and just a couple of months before the baby was due her mother finally figured it out...I think with help from my mother...but we were very close and I loved her little guy.  The loss I felt sitting in that lobby talking on the phone to my mother was so intension...but there was so much more to the story...  Her nine year old sister, her mother, her step father...all gone.  My youngest brother...not the baby's father but the other one...was supposed to be in that car and at the last moment they changed their minds.  The baby was supposed to stay with my parents and my brother was going to go with them (this brother actually loved this girl) but at the last minute she decided to take the baby with her.  The only person to survive out of their car was the 6 month old baby, stories say that she threw herself over him to protect him and that is the only reason he is alive today.  The part that still haunts me after all this time is not just that they died because everyone dies sometime...but how horrible their deaths were...I won't give you details but lets just say that no one died painlessly.  

The woman who ran the stop sign lost one of her own children, it wasn't buckled in and was threwn out of the vehicle.  Story was that the children were loud and she wasn't paying enough attention to the road and missed the sign.  For many years I was very angry at this woman, even after I had children I could not understand, and I could most definetly not relate to her pain...I honestly felt she got what she deserved.  Now maybe old age has softened me, but I sympathize with the pain she must have felt all these years...she killed five people and left a baby without it's mother...that would have killed me.  

Almost 20 years have passed and none of us are the same because of the choices of that one person.  There was one sister that wasn't in the vehicle and she lost her whole family that day...it altered her life in many negative ways.  My nephew is now 20 years old and has had a rough life, no saying that his life would have been better if his mother was alive to raise him but I know that he has missed the woman he never knew.  My brothers were both effected deeply by this accident as for months after one or the other of them were calling out her name in their sleep.  I lost a very close friend, moved away from my family so I didn't have to deal with the pain of the loss.  My parents lives were altered the most, at 40 years old they ended up raising a baby (my brother was only 17 and not ready for a kid).   Last month I went to the P.A.R.T.Y. program and this is what they teach kids that there are no accidents just bad choices...that woman's bad choice changed our lives completely, and what she took from us can never be replaced.

There are many other dates in my life that stick out marriage, birth of my children, divorce, death of my father but I think because the 20th anniversary of this tragedy is approaching it is always on my mind.  Please remember the choices you make effect others....good or bad.