It was about 10:00 pm when the car slid on the icy snow-covered road. It went sideways into oncoming traffic. State Route 82 was a busy road, even on this terrible blizzard of a night. She’d left her home only minutes earlier to go crosstown to pick up her teenage daughter’s best friend. They say she died instantly as a full-sized Oldsmobile hit her small car broadside.
She never thought she’d not be coming back home. She said no goodbyes, made no calls to those close to her. Never arranged to have her children’s future secured. Never thought of what would happen to the family business? Never was able to thank her husband for all that he’d done for her and the children. Never had a chance to reflect on the life she’d lived.
Her husband, unaware, was still working at their restaurant. A phone call came to the house. A neighbour said there was a terrible accident just up the road. ‘It involved a car just like your mother’s. Is she home?’
The oldest, the son, just 16 years old, told his sister there’d been an accident. Both felt they knew. No more words were exchanged. The son put his shoes on and ran out of the house and down along the shoulder of Route 82. He was an athlete and he ran as if he was in a race. Long strides, eyes squinting through the blizzard. His feet slipping on the ice below the freshly fallen snowflakes.
Up ahead he saw several semi-trucks pulled up along the side of the road. Flares were lit on the ground. There was a single red flashing light from a police vehicle. He wanted to have his thoughts be wrong. He wanted to see that what was in front of him would be unfamiliar cars and only strangers. But there it was. His mother’s small blue car off to the edge of the road. It was bent in half and unattended. A group of men stood nearby talking to each other.
The son went up to the driver’s window which had been broken out. Slumped down behind the wheel was a body. It was covered with a blanket. He saw a tuft of red hair sticking out. He pleaded, ‘Mom, it’s me, Bobby.’ There was no answer. Only a silence that would last forever.
It was the son’s first experience of death. His first knowledge of the power of it. He wasn’t ready for this. It wasn’t fair. No warning, just gone in an instant. He was not consulted. He was not given a chance to stop this terrible ending to the most important person in his life. The son began pounding on the car. Beating the thing that had taken his mother’s life. He yelled out in anger, ‘You fucker God. Come here right now and I’ll beat your fucking ass. How dare you do this.’ Then he swung his fists into the night air. His head dropped and he began to sob, as the snow swirled round him, the car, and the lives of all those that were left behind.