PROLOGUE
Its funny, the way I remember the Accident. Its as if I floated above the Jeep Cherokee as it skidded out of control on that snowy night between Christmas and New Years. Jeff and I were traveling up to the condo in Mammoth with our best friends Sally and Brian to ring in the new year. We’d been in high spirits the entire way up from San Diego. We had our music, The Dave Matthews Band, of course, blasting away at full volume. Four self-admitted daveheads, we reminisced about the concerts we’d attended together over the years. We were joyous and joyful, we had everything to look forward to. I’d just finished the manuscript of the novel I’d been slaving away on for the better part of ten years. Sally and Brian had broken the news to family and friends at Christmas that they were expecting their first child. Jeff and I’d be celebrating 10 years together, six of those married, in January. We were high on ourselves and our lives and feeling the kind of invincibility that is so rare and fleeting once you grow out of your teens.
We’d gotten a late start, Jeff had a few things he had to wrap up. As director of special events for Qualcomm Stadium, he was coming up on the busiest and most important event in his professional life: the super bowl San Diego would be hosting that January. We were not even sure until the day before that we’d be able to get away for the long weekend. Jeff managed to pull it off by promising to be available via cell, email and fax should he be needed, and we were sure he would be.
In any case, our skis were firmly attached to the roof, our champagne and the sparkling cider for Sally was in the back of the SUV. Sally joked that since she’d have to sit out the ski sessions due to her pregnancy, she’d be in the condo warming her toes by the fire and catching up on all the reading she never gets to do when school is in session. Sally was an associate professor of biology at UCSD who had an absolute passion for trashy romance novels.
We’d all known each other for what felt like a million years. We met in college at the University of San Diego and had been nearly inseparable ever since. Jeff and I had been together since junior year and that fateful Gamma Phi Beta grab a date party when Sally had convinced me to ask her then boyfriend Steve’s roommate. Sally and Brian had been a part of our circle of friends all along, though they did not get together romantically until a few years after college in a rare moment when the two serial monogamists found themselves between relationships.
And there we all were, a decade later, laughing and singing and debating and thoroughly enjoying where we were, who we were and where we were going. We felt lucky, decidedly and completely lucky.
They call the phenomena black ice. The road appears to be clear of snow and ice and normal looking ahead of you. But its not. It’s a sheet of slick, sheet, slippery, deadly ice.
The Cherokee hit it going 75mph or so and went into a flat out spin. I remember reaching for Jeff’s hand as it happened…and then I was out. Whether I lost consciousness or went into shock, I don’t know.
The next thing I remember, its as if I was watching the scene from above. The Cherokee is wrapped around a tree. Ambulances and fire trucks everywhere. Paramedics working frantically on one person, a sheet already pulled over the body of one of us, the two remaining being whisked into ambulances and off into the night.
But whether I actually remember this or constructed the scene based on things I learned later, I don’t know.
My life changed forever that night. What had started out as such a grand adventure, the last one we’d have as couples without children, turned out to be the last one we ever had.
On that night, I lost the love of my life – my husband Jeff and my best friend Sally. Brian and I would recover-our bones and bruises and injuries, at least. But the months of physical therapy that were ahead to repair my shattered leg and Brian’s nearly severed arm, were nothing compared to the anguish we would feel for the rest of our lives. We had always thought the four of us lived charmed lives. Things like this were not supposed to happen to people like us. They just didn’t. You do not become a widow at 31. You do not lose a wife and a baby on a snowy night a few days after Christmas.
This is the story of how we picked up the pieces of our broken bodies, hearts and lives.
Protected under a Creative Commons License. All work copyright Amy Lamare 2008
