11 years... Even smaller... it passes in a blink of an eye... such a small window of time.
8 years.... Minuscule... so small an amount of time that it might get overlooked in the story of a life... it's the time between graduation and marriage... it's the blip on the radar between the first day at a new job and getting a big promotion ...
All these years mean something to me.
21 years ago I was innocent. 21 years ago I didn't have any fears in my world. 21 years ago my mama and daddy could defeat anything that gave me nightmares. 21 years ago I was a little girl.
21 years ago a guy drank a bottle of whiskey (or a bottle of vodka, or a case of beer) and decided to go for a drive. 21 years ago he thought that he was untouchable. 21 years ago he probably thought that he wasn't that drunk, thought he'd only had a couple. 21 years ago he thought he was fine. 21 years ago he destroyed a community. 21 years ago he killed a girl and a boy. 21 years ago he sent 2 grieving parents to an emergency room. 21 years ago I stopped being a little girl.
I was 11 years old. It was a Sunday. I had bought all my school supplies. I had a new back pack and a new binder. I can still close my eyes and smell that new binder smell. I sniff a binder today and I am not taken back to a happy childhood memory. New binder smell takes me back to that Sunday evening that changed my life forever. I hate the way that new binders smell.
I had a 3-D binder that year. It was 1993 and 3-D stuff was all the rage. It was pink and it looked like it had bubbles all over it. The bubbles were an optical illusion. Mead really out did themselves in 1993.
I sat in my living room and tore my new pens and pencils out of their paper and plastic wrappings. I placed them carefully in the slots in my new JanSport back pack. I put the paper in my binder and separated it with subject dividers. I was ready for sixth grade.
It was going to be our big year. We had talked about it all summer. We had hoped and prayed that we would get the same home room. We were ready to start changing classes but we really didn't want to have to do it alone. We were sure that we could tackle anything together. We were going to open house on Monday.
21 years ago I went to my room and played with my Barbie's. We didn't attend church regularly on Sunday nights back then. I happily surrounded myself in my Barbie fantasy land. I was almost too old to enjoy Barbie's. I would have never played with them with my friends around. Never would have played with them around most of my friends. My best friend still liked to play with Barbie's. She and I would comb their hair and change their clothes all the while talking about which boys we liked or which girls had made us mad the week before. 21 years ago we both stopped playing with Barbie Dolls.
I was playing with Barbie and Mississippi Burning was on Channel 11 that night. The grown up part of my 11 year old self wanted to watch Mississippi Burning. The child part wanted to brush Barbie's hair so I did both. It's weird the things you remember.
There was a knock at my door. I always kept it locked to keep my brother out. I figured it was him. He was the only on that ever knocked. I put Barbie down and stomped to my door. I was surprised when I opened it to see my Daddy.
He was crying. My daddy was crying. I don't think I had ever seen my daddy cry before this night. My mother ushered my brother into my daddy's arms. I looked down the hallway and I see my grandmother crying. I assume that my Papaw is dead. I sniffle and prepare myself for the worst possible news that an 11 year old girl could imagine.
It's not Papaw.... that was the thought that had me relieved and devastated in all of a second.
.....
I don't remember how he said it. I remember him being honest. I remember him crying.... a lot. I remember him saying there had been an accident. I remember him saying that Crystal and CJ were dead. My best friend and her little brother were dead.
The rest of the night was kind of a blur. I remember someone put Grease 2 on the TV. I laid on the couch, in a fog and saw parts of it. I cried a lot. A few of my friends called, but what sympathy can another 11 year old share? How were any of us expected to cope with this?
I went to my room again eventually. I shut the closet doors on my Barbie's. I never played with them again. I sat on my bed and I looked at the guardian angel portrait that hung above my bed and I asked God "Why?"
11 years and 8 years.... Hard to imagine that as I look at my own children. 11 years and 8 years and they were gone from this Earth. They were on their way to church. Less than a five mile drive from their home. The drunk driver that killed them was less than a half a mile from his home. LESS than a half a mile... And you know, as angry as I still am, I can't help but think that he was a young life, too. Younger than I am now... I don't know him, but I can't fathom that he could ever forget about the lives he extinguished. The community he ravaged.
It took a while but I eventually accepted that God's ways are not our own. God has a plan for every life. I wish I could have a Jimmy Stewart moment and see how different my own would be had it not been for Crystal. Had she lived it would have been so different. Had she never existed it would have been even more different. Her 11 years and her brother's 8 years meant something to me.
21 years and I still tear up thinking about them. 21 years and I still look back and wonder what might have been. 21 years and I believe, firmly, that they are waiting on me. They are in the arms of my Savior and they are waiting to greet me on the other side. I thank God for the 11 years that Crystal was in my life, including every slumber party and pizza hut trip and whispered secret in the dark of my room...and for the 8 years that CJ pestered us and begged us to play Nintendo baseball with him... even for that time that he whopped me in the head with a golf club when we were building forts in the woods. For every memory, I am truly grateful.
August 8 will be 21 years.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
1 Corinthians 1:3-4
Author's Note:
Last week a 10 year old girl and her 8 year old brother were killed along with their grandmother in a car accident near Tallahassee. They were from Thomasville, AL, which is just a hop over from where I live now. They were buried this weekend. Their father buried his children and his mother. The city of Thomasville was devastated by this tragedy.
Alas, life goes on...the Thomasville schools started back today. I have thought about them all day. I am praying for the children as they adjust to life without their friends. I am praying for that father and his wife as they learn to live without their children. It took our little community years to repair our hearts from our tragic loss. I know what they are going through and so I pray even harder for their comfort.
Great story of remembrance Heddy.
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