On a sunny, windy fall day I received news that clenched the breath in my throat. Michelle, a friend from college, had lost her daughters in a car accident.
Shauna and Meghan, 17 and 15, were driving home late at night. Their parents knew they had been at a friend’s house watching a Major League Baseball playoff game.
Two miles from home, the car went off the road and struck a utility pole. Thankfully, a third girl in the car survived; power to the utility pole had to be cut so she could be rescued.
Alcohol was not considered a factor in the accident, officials said, but speed, then an overcorrection by an inexperienced driver, contributed to it.
I have always heard that the loss of a child is the worst of all, and always believed it. Your children are supposed to outlive you. You give them hundreds of baths, lie with them at night as they flail with ear infections. You plan birthday parties, watch practices and games and plays, supervise homework and talk together. You hope, dream.
I have known a few people who lost children. My throat still closes every time I see Bob, whose son died skateboarding three years ago. Twenty years ago, my friends Jeff and Joan’s young daughter was hit by a car while trick-or-treating, and every year I cringe when the Halloween decorations first arrive in stores. Another friend lost a son to cancer; two have lost them to freak accidents.
But I never thought I’d know someone who lost two children.
Michelle also has a third child, a son, but right now I do not know how she is putting one foot in front of the other.
Michelle lived down the hall from me in my freshman year in college, and I always liked her. She was cheerful, friendly, breezy. Last summer, at our 25th reunion, we had a particularly nice chat. Michelle always had seemed rather blessed, very together. She married and started a family early. The family thrived. Her kids were three among 21 cousins.
How could this have happened to her?
My friends and I – many, but not all, parents – are heartsick and empathetic. And we have immediately reflected on the times we, as kids, could have created this crushing pain in our families’ lives.
“I did the stupidest things,” says my friend Garett. “I did so many stupid things.”
“The risks went on and on,” says Catherine. “Some I was aware of, some not.”
“I was the chosen one,” Tracy offers energetically. “I drove when we were drunk because I was the best at it.”
I can’t even remember all of my heedless actions. One random image, from about age 13, is of kids running around on Halloween night, and someone a few years older coming along in a dune buggy, and us careening around hanging off the sides. The vehicle went off the road, and we jumped off.
Another friend, Penn, says that at 15 he entered what his father later told him he thought of as the Decade of Hope – that his son would survive.
The father was right to worry. Sixteen-year-olds have more accidents per driving mile than any other age group. A National Institutes of Health study published early this year suggests that the region of the brain that judges risk is not even fully formed until age 25 (risk assessment improves with every year of age). An NIH study last summer confirmed that teens drive more dangerously when other teens are in the car.
I have sometimes ventured to think what it would be like to lose one of my children, and if I was falling asleep, the thought jolted me awake with hammering heart. Sometimes, when I have both arms around my sons, now 9 and 12, the unwanted thought steals in, unbidden: “Will I someday look back on this as ‘before?”‘
Searching, I read “The Disappearance: A Memoir of Loss,” by a French author, Genevieve Jurgensen, who lost her two young daughters to a highway accident. Many months later, she experienced her first seconds of normalcy on a trip to Italy over Christmas, when, in moonlight across snowy fields, she glimpsed the ancient, beautiful village of Assisi.
She realized then that she “did have a future,” and eventually created a life that is rich “despite itself.” She went on to have two other children, but will always long for her lost ones; will always be the mother of four.
Michelle’s daughters were inseparable, trading clothes, often mistakenly called by each other’s names. Shauna was extroverted, a team gymnast who practiced moves on the beach as her father called them out. Meghan played on three sports teams and was quiet and studious. Her family cut evening outings short so she could return to homework.
Shakily, I tell my sons that teens might sometimes think nothing will go wrong, but terrible things really do happen. Nice kids do things they would not consider or accede to when older.
An essayist once wrote about attending her high
school reunion, and how she looked around and thought about those who did not live to see graduation, and how they missed the subsequent milestones. She felt that those present were survivors.
I remember Michelle every day, and wonder how she will find the ways to survive the empty places at her table.
May she find happiness again.
