Ever had one of those days that changes your whole life? Well, mine was 19 years ago today. Jan 17th, 1989.
My sister-in-law….my wife’s identical twin…. was a single parent, with two kids aged 11 and 12. She was 33, and after many tough years, things were finally looking up. She had her first full-time job. She worked at a Jesuit Seminary on the outskirts of town. My wife worked at the same place, but it was her day off, or they would have been together. She had to take the city bus to the corner, and walk about a quarter mile up the highway to the gates of the Seminary. She always hated that walk!
It was mild, for January, that day and the roads were wet, but not icy. For reasons that we will never know, a car coming toward her lost control and left the road. The police said if she had stayed where she was, the car would have passed her on the grass, but I don’t know anyone who could stand still in the face of an out-of-control car. She ran from the shoulder of the road….into the path of car….and was killed instantly.
My wife and her twin had that uncanny closeness that only identical twins seem to have. They would complete each other’s sentences and carry on conversations that no-one else could understand. She was beyond devastated, but never really had time to grieve.
Without question, the hardest thing I’ve ever done was go to the school and tell those kids that their mother was dead. I will never forget tiny Sara, sitting in my lap and asking, “What will happen to us?” and me saying, “You’ll live with us”.
We hadn’t discussed it….didn’t really need to….it was the natural solution. We were all very close and I was already a father-figure to them. My wife and I had been married for 14 years and, after five miscarriages and a still-born baby, we had resigned ourselves to the fact that we would never have children. Now we had two, and soon, after the miracle birth of our daughter, we would have three. I would soon learn that being a father figure is a whole lot different than being a father to two kids entering puberty. It sounds trite to say that I wish I had known then, what I know now, but its true.
But that is a blog for a different day….maybe. Today is a day to remember their mother. Even though they saw each other all the time, my wife and her twin talked on the phone every day, sometimes for hours. Now she talks to Sara every day, and to our two-year-old grandson who is, by the way, the cutest kid on the face of the earth!
