June 22, 1986 was a very defining day in the history that is Mon-Mon. Twenty years ago my parents were killed in a car accident. I’ve tried to write something, anything in memory of the people they were and yet I draw a blank. One would think I could fill these pages with how much I miss them, how sad I am of all the events and people they’ve missed, and yet not one darn thing comes out.
Every year this day comes, and it feels like every other day. Therein lies the silent agony. Because with each day that comes, the same sense of loss and grief is present. It never really strengthens or lessens from day to day. It’s a sense I’ve come to recognize as a constant companion, like a lover you wake up to every morning always confident he or she will be right by your side.
I’m always amazed at how uncomfortable a loss like mine makes people – even for people who have known me for years. And so I rarely share this day with anyone, because I don’t like to make folks uncomfortable. So beyond the yearly call I get from my sister-in-law, in which I try to reminisce with her about people I can only barely recall, I am alone with my thoughts and sadness on this day.
I do remember my parents, but it is with the eyes of a 13 year-old. I was not a very enlightened 13 year-old either. It never dawned on me to take stock of who my parents were at that time. I was always more concerned with the cute boy in my class. My mother called me from her trip the night before the accident. I will forever remember that she did so, since she called to say she loved me – a final, blessed gift I treasure more than anything I received before or since.
I will also forever remember the call that came through that Sunday morning twenty years ago mostly because I answered the phone. The adult voice on the other end asked to speak to another adult, and I casually told him my folks were due back from a road trip that very morning. I will forever remember the sound of anguish in my brother’s voice once he heard the news his “Oh, god no. Don’t tell me that,” will forever ring in my ears. As will the look on his face as he told me, “It’s just you and me now, Monica,” as I realized what the call meant. I will forever recall the tears I shed that entire morning and afternoon, until I was too numb to do anything at all.
But the specifics about my parents – that I cannot share on these pages. I can’t tell you what my mother’s favorite color was, nor can I tell you how my dad liked his coffee. I can’t tell you the story on how my folks met, nor can I share what they thought when each of their children were born. I can’t even tell you what shoe size my mom wore or if my dad liked to wear loafers. I just don’t know.
I can tell you that my parents were well loved by everyone they knew. They seemed to provide the support and stability within their own family structure, because when they died, that family structure crumbled like a house built out of deck of cards. Slowly over the years, it’s built back up. But the blow of my parents’ death was felt for quite a long time.
Especially to a 13 year-old girl, who went from the youngest and cherished child to an orphan in the span of seconds it took for my father’s car to drift across the center lane into the oncoming path of a van filled with a vacationing family from California. I think often of the impact of the two cars – the destructive violence that must have occurred at that moment. Just as often, I wonder if there was a deafening silence once the impact was over. How quiet it must have been as two people who shaped my world up until that moment passed from this earthly plane of existence.
And yet here I am.
Still able to breathe and live and love and grieve. That accident shaped the person who sits here typing these words that you read. All the pain, loss, sorrow – I suppose they made me stronger. Or so they tell me. I am a survivor. A title that always filled me with dread, but one I reluctantly carry because… well… it’s who I am.
We are all survivors in a way. So I will take this moment to share a silence with my fellow survivors and remember those who passed away.
And I will grieve still.
