The last time I saw her alive and well–well being the more remarkable descriptor–was the day before Christmas break. We were seventh graders sprawled out on the floor of the language arts teacher’s room, eating popcorn and watching Babes in Toyland, a bunch of kids who had known each other since kindergarten. We were all so excited for Christmas we could barely hear the movie over our chitchat.
I don’t know how I would have felt if I knew what was going to happen. It makes me tear up to think about it, even today, over two decades later. It changed my life.
Angela had the biggest, goofiest personality, a space between her top two teeth that could hold a tic tac, and skin the color of caramel latte. On the bus she would scoot down into the seat, press her knees into the seatback in front, and belt out, “I’m a barbie girl, in a barbie wo-orld.” She was hilarious, a crazy jumble of arms and legs that would break out dancing without warning. Thirteen years old. Our school’s most promising comedienne.
Angela’s family was traveling to Texas for Christmas, driving through the night on a twisty road. It might have been icy–I don’t remember the details. I recall my mom getting a phone call that informed us of the accident. It was a semi that hit them on a blind corner somewhere in Arkansas–they never saw it coming. It killed Angie’s parents and older brother and sister on impact, as they were in the front of the van. Angela and her younger brother were presumably asleep in the back seat, and they were taken to a hospital in critical condition.
It so happened that my family was visiting our grandparents in southern Missouri for the holiday. We were only forty-five minutes from the hospital, so we made quick plans to go visit Angela and her little brother, Jean-Paul, who had been a student in my mom’s third grade class a couple years prior.
On that December day–I think it was the day after Christmas–I put on my new black sweater and climbed into the back of the car, scared. We drove in silence and sadness, full of sorrow for what the future held for my friend. This was years before I even knew to consider brain injury–my twelve year old self mostly wondered if Angie would be back at school. Even if she did get better, how could a seventh grader live after two-thirds of her family was gone?
At the door to ICU my dad gently touched my shoulder and said, “Pearl, I want you to be prepared for how they might look. It’s possible,” he hesitated, “…it’s possible Angela or Jean-Paul could be missing an arm or something. We just don’t know how badly they are hurt. Are you ready?”
I swallowed and nodded. Then he pushed a button on the wall and a nurse led us into the room.
Angela and her brother were in two beds, side by side. They were both in medically-induced comas, white hospital blankets covering them up to their chin. We were their first visitors–it was just us and them, a consuming silence within a hum of life-supporting machines. I felt an immediate, unwelcome grief slap my in my face. No preparation was sufficient, nothing would have readied me to see them in this condition. Mom and Dad approached the bed and quietly, gently, tenderly they spoke to Angela as if she were an infant. “Hey there, Angela,” my mother whispered as she stroked her black hair. There were bits of broken glass still stuck to it, road rash on her face, eyes purple and swollen shut. “We came to visit you,” my dad said, leaning toward her face. He coached our basketball team, had seen her long limbs flying down the court.
After a few moments, my mom moved over to Jean-Paul’s bed, so I took her place at Angela’s side.
“You can hold her hand,” the nurse softly encouraged, and I was suddenly aware she hadn’t lost an arm. Words stuck in my throat. I held her hand and tried not to cry, told her we loved her and missed her at school, even though we still had a week and a half before it would be in session. I squeezed her hand, willing it to squeeze back like I’d read about in novels. She didn’t squeeze back.
After a while, we left. There was nothing we could do, it seemed. It was dark in the room; it felt hopeless. On our drive back, I cried hot, angry tears as I stared out the window.
Three days later, back home in our small town, I worked on an art project at our kitchen table. My mom had sketched out an M.C. Escher, Metamophasis, on a 3 foot by 5 foot poster paper, and I glued bits of torn colored paper to fill in the bird impressions while listening to Christmas music. The phone rang and Mom answered. Angela was dead. It was December 29th. I stood up from my seat at the table, went to my room, and bawled on my bed.
I wondered how I would write about the time we lost them. When Christmas vacation comes, I always wait for the lump in my throat to dissipate, and it never does.
I hesitate a bit writing this, because even though time has passed I know Jean-Paul is out there somewhere, undoubtedly swallowed up in loss every Christmas, mourning what he lost as a ten or eleven year old. His privacy matters to me, his story is his and not mine. His pain is deeper. He was a child when it happened, and II think about the trauma compounded by not understanding why this happened–how God could allow all the people he loved most to die over Christmas vacation. How a child could wake up from a coma to his whole world, a heap of ashes. I never saw him again. His extended family took him in and raised him somewhere in the city, I think.
When a person we love dies, we often remember all the good things they did in life, their wonderful qualities. But sometimes the blow is just too massive and the people left behind are stunned. Listing what’s been lost is unbearable. Sometimes the survivor needs a witness more than they need details.
John Steinbeck once wrote a letter to a friend, Ed Ricketts, who was grieving the death of his mother:
The matter of death is very personal–almost like an idea–and it has to be discovered and accepted over and over again no matter what the age or the condition of the dying. And there is nothing for the outsider to do except to stand by and maybe to indicate that the person involved is not so alone as the death always makes him think he is. And that is why I am writing this letter.
Our small town held a memorial for Angela’s family before school started up in January. The high school gym was packed with red, teary faces. I witnessed the adoration the community had for this family, expressed with a sorrow so heavy it hung in the air like fog. We were too late to tell them we loved them; we were too stunned at the permanence of death.
If it finds Jean-Paul, I hope he knows I remember. I’m counting: it’s been exactly 23 years. I’m still discovering the pain over and over, too, every December 29th, still reliving a tiny fraction of his despair. His family isn’t forgotten. I’ll remember them with words and the grief that rushes in every December.
I hope it makes him feel not so alone.
