Love Notes

Chapter 12.

I obviously did not physically kill either my mom or my grandfather. Logically I know this. Logically my dad knows this too, however that logic couldn't bring him to look me in the eye when he came into the hospital room to see me after it all happened. Or at the funeral, or memorial masses, or just about any time we speak about them now.
In his mind, if I didn't need to be somewhere that day, nobody would have been in the car, we would never have been hit by a truck, and my mom and Pop Pop would still be here, living.

I was eleven when they died. I had a violin recital that day and we were running a little late. Sarah and Dad were meant to come along too, but Sarah had been running a fever since the night before, so they stayed behind. I was so excited to have my grandfather there to watch me that it didn't matter who else came along. He was going to see the results of all the work he had poured into me over the years, and that was all that mattered.

My mom said that we were only a few minutes behind. She said she could still get us there on time and not to worry about it. I remember how she smiled at me through her rear view mirror, promising that it would all be fine.

She loved to watch me perform. I'm sure she intended to record me playing up there on stage that day, just like she did every other time. I'd often search the crowd for her as soon as the curtain was drawn, only to find her standing off to the side of an aisle making sure that she caught every second on tape. She'd give me a tight lipped smile as tears welled up in her eyes, making them seem like they were sparkling. I imagine it would have been no different if we had made it that day.

At some point along the road, my mom missed a stop sign. A pick up truck coming from our left hand side had no time to stop, and it hit the front of our car. I don't remember much of it, just that a lot of people came to help. All of a sudden I was with a strange woman at the back of an ambulance while paramedics worked on my grandfather. I couldn't see my mom.

The truck driver was across the street, sitting on the curb in a state of shock as he watched on. His face was almost grey. I remember that he had this tattoo on his forearm that I kept staring at. It was one of those vintage style ones with a cute little swallow flying over a banner that had the name Veronica written on it. Over the years I've painted a picture in my head of who Veronica might be. Was she a girlfriend? A wife? Maybe even a daughter? All I really know about her is that her name is now etched into my memory.

When we got to the hospital, they put me in a room on my own and had a doctor check me over. Bar a few cuts and bruises, I was completely fine. I figured that was going to be the case for my mom and grandfather too, and that all I was waiting for was for them to see a doctor like me.

I waited and waited for my mom to walk in and check on me, I must of asked to see her a hundred times.

When my dad finally arrived, he walked into the room like he was afraid of what was inside. I could tell that he had been crying, but there was no sensitivity from him at all, he just came right out and said it.

"They're dead, Isobel."

I can still hear those three words every time I think about it. Still hear the break in his voice. The sound of his uncontrollable sobbing haunts me.

My mom pretty much died on impact when the truck hit. My grandfather hung on as best he could, but he died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital from internal bleeding. It was strange really, the only thing that saved me was my placement in the car. I was sitting on the right hand side in the back. I think about that all the time. Had I got in the other side of the car, or had I begged my pop pop to let me sit up front with him like I usually did, I'd be with them.

Everyone said I was lucky.
I wished that I'd been sitting up front.

For months the remainder of our family moved through this thick black fog. Our whole world was dark. Finding any kind of normal was impossible, and every single bit of our life changed.