Six Years

Six years ago, on Sunday, March 3rd, my dad died in a truck, on the side of the Muskogee Turnpike. I think I probably talk about this too much. Probably to the point of driving people crazy. I've got a lot to talk about today, so bear with me.

I was living in Russellville then. Working at Tech. I had a piece of junk car that always had problems...I'm so thankful for that car. It happened that the week before the accident, my car would not go in reverse. So, I called and told my dad. He wanted to come get it and take a look. So, on Monday he and my mom drove to Russellville to get it. We hung out in my dorm apartment for a while, then drove over to where my car had last died. My mom was driving it home and he was following behind in his truck. So, I rode in his truck from the parking lot, back to my dorm. He dropped me off and said "love you sis". And they went home.

It turned out the car had serious problems, so on Wednesday, my friend Cindy drove me to Charleston to meet my dad and get my mom's car to drive until it got fixed. That was the last time I ever saw or talked to him. If it wasn't for that old piece of junk car, I wouldn't have seen him two times that week.

My mom was planning to go to Tulsa that weekend to watch Bryce and Garrett play ball. Since I had her car, my dad decided to go with her. I took mom's car to Harrison to see Chris for the weekend. It snowed on Friday night and Saturday, but had warmed up on Sunday and the roads seemed o.k. Chris and I went on a walk around his neighborhood that afternoon and we were about to go to his friends house to visit. When we walked in to the door from walking, I noticed that I had missed calls from my sister on my cell phone. I listened to the message and she was screaming for me to call her. I called her right back and she told me that mom and dad had been in a bad accident - that mom was in critical condition and they wouldn't tell her anything about dad. She was crying and screaming at me...telling me to come to Muskogee to the hospital but to be careful because the roads were bad. I fell to my knees in the living room of Chris' apartment.

Just hours before, mom and dad left Tulsa - they stopped at Garden Ridge on the way out of town to pick up flowers for the Cemetary in Waldron then headed towards Greenwood. When they got just past the 2nd toll booth on the Muskogee Turnpike, a truck driving towards Tulsa hit a patch of ice and crossed the median - hitting my mom and dad's full sized Dodge pick-up head-on. Mom was reading a book, and remembers that he said "watch out" and threw himself over her. Both my dad and the man and woman in the truck that hit them died instantly at the sceen. My mom was the only survivor. When they crashed, my mom's glasses fell off. She is basically blind without them. She could see a blury figure of my dad, but couldn't really see him.

After I got the call, I couldn't think of how to get to Muskogee from Harrison. Chris and I just got in the car and drove. I prayed out loud, not knowing what was going on, but praying that God would spare my mom and dad, that he would save them. When we got to Dover, I got a phone call from Kerry. Chris pulled over at a gas station. She told me that mom was conscious and it looked like she was going to be ok. They had been in to see her and she recognized them. She said they were moving her to Fort Smith. Relief. I could breathe again. "How's dad" was my next question...her answer changed my life forever. She said "He's Gone" and I can remember saying "no he's not"...I screamed and yelled - almost out of controll. Kerry told me later that it was the hardest thing she's had to do, telling me over the phone when all of them were together at the hospital. I remember saying over and over and over..."what are we going to do". I don't even know that I knew Chris was in the car with me - that drive from Dover to Fort Smith was the longest drive of my life. When we got to the emergency room, there was already an elderly couple from my mom and dad's church waiting. No one from my family was there yet. Chris and I sat by ourselves waiting for the ambulance to get there with mom. Not long after, my grandma, aunt and uncle got there and I hugged and hugged them. It felt good to have someone who was hurting with me there to hug. They had to wait to transport mom until they could get a paramedic - rather than an EMT becuase of her condition. We sat in the emergency room waiting room for about 3 hours before she finally got there. When they pulled up to the door, I stood waiting for them to bring her in and a young orderly asked me to move away from the door - I remember yelling at him. My aunt pulled him aside and said something to him, and they let me wait by the door. When they came in, I couldn't recognize her. Her face was bruised and bloodied and she was extremely swolen. They rushed her past me into surgery. While we waited for her to get to the hospital, and while she was in surgery, people started coming in droves. Family, friends, people from my mom and dad's church. It was unbelievable. It was hard to grieve for my dad becuase we were so worried about my mom. When the doctor came out he told us that they didn't have to do surgery. In Muskogee, they said she had "internal trunk injuries" and a broken hip. When they got into surgery, they discovered no internal injuries and her hip was not broken - severely injured, but not broken. The newspaper even reported that she had internal injuries. I believe it was a miracle. Without a doubt. Later on, I saw a picture of the truck they were riding in and there's just no way she should have survived.

The doctor said that she wanted to see me and my aunt, so we went back into the recovery room. I put my face up against hers...she said "I'm sorry about your daddy". We cried together.

She was in the hospital for about 2 weeks. We waited until Thursday to have dad's memorial service so that she was well enough to be able to go. Melissa, Tricia, Kerry and I had to go to the funeral home and make all of the arrangements. I'll never forget walking in the room with all of the caskets and having to pick out the one they would put my dad in. It was terrible. That whole process is just terrible.

On the day of the funeral, they transported mom to the church in a non-emergency ambulance. She was in a lot of pain - more than I can imagine both emotionally and physically. Her ribs were broken, her fingers were broken, her ankle was broken...she was bruised and battered. She didn't get to go to the graveside service because they had to bring her back to the hospital. It was all very surreal - we didn't have an open casket. None of us (including my mom) ever saw him. I'm ok with that. I wanted to remember him playing with my nephews and being a super grandad...not lying in a casket. So, we played a slideshow of pictures of him, talked about him, told stories, laughed, cried and sang songs. He would never have believed the number of people who came to his service. It was all kind of a blur.

Now, 6 years later, I'm still sad. I still miss him. I still wish he was here to play with Carlee and Eli. I wish that they could experience what a great grandad he was. That he could take them for horse rides and drive them up and down the road on his tractor. That they could ride around on his back in the living room and he would buck them off like a bull. I wish I could see his big hands, that I could hear him say "awe bull" one more time, and that I could hear him say "love you sis" one more time.