My Story of Loss

 

It was Christmas Eve, a beautiful, sunny day with a clear, blue Montana sky. We slept late that morning. I said good-bye to my husband and made the ten minute drive to the company where we both worked. Our plan was that I would tie up some loose ends at work and then when he got to work, I would go home and spend the rest of the day with the children, getting ready for Christmas.

We were excited. My husband, Michael, had been working nights and week-ends o buy computers for the kids. They were hidden in the basement, ready to be set up for their Christmas surprise.

I had been at work for less than an hour when a friend arrived and told me there had been a terrible accident on the highway just up the road and that someone had been killed. A tremor ran through me. I called home. My daughter answered and said that Daddy had left about five minutes ago.

I grabbed my keys, telling my friends I was going up to the site of the accident (just a quarter of a mile up the highway) to "make sure it wasn't Michael".

There was a line of cars waiting as I approached the accident. I pulled over and started to walk the rural highway surrounded by mountains and snow and blinding sunlight. It was about nine o'clock in the morning.

I saw the first car involved in the wreck. Not Michael. Only one car to go, then I can relax. I walked on.

There it was in the middle of the road, turned in the opposite direction; Michael's crumpled car, broken glass everywhere.

A policeman tried to stop me from coming closer. "That's my husband's car," I told him, still not grasping what it meant. Why aren't you helping him? I'm thinking. My mind alternates between racing and standing still. Why aren't they doing something to help him? Where are the 'jaws of life'? Where's the ambulance? Why isn't someone helping him?

"That's my husband's car", I say again. I'm in a sickening daze.

"Ma'am, perhaps you should come over here and sit down." Not a good sign.

"Tell me what's going on." I hear myself say. My world is spinning. Someone is dead. That much I understand. A friend at the scene tells me he has seen the body and although the face is badly damaged by the accident, it doesn't look like Michael. But, how can it not be him? It's his car.

"Does your husband have a mustache, ma'am?" How can this be happening?

Somewhere in the turmoil they decide to show me the body—not his face—just his clothes to see if it is him.

"Yes, that's him," I hear the faint words fall out of my mouth. "He said he was going to wear a green shirt for Christmas." I'm still not really getting it. I see his chest wearing the familiar green shirt. But he's not moving. His chest is still in the cold morning air. How can it be him?

"Are you sure he's dead?" I ask a question that makes no sense based on what I'm looking at. A blanket of glass is covering his lifeless form.

It can't be, but it is. I'm so confused. I saw him so alive less than an hour ago—standing in our kitchen. He was talking about Christmas, the ladder that was still up in the dining room that he needed to put away and when he'd be home for dinner. It's not possible that now he's dead. It is simply not possible.

It can't be real. But somehow I know it is. This is my first moment of confronting the tragic reality that is staring me in the face. There in the middle of the highway on that bright, clear Christmas Eve morning, surrounded by snow covered mountains and the beauty of December, I fell to my knees in a sea of broken glass, utterly stunned.

Eventually, I remember that the children are at home alone, wondering what is going on. I've got to get to them. Someone gets my car and drives me home. I'm dazed and sick and not really sure I know what has happened to me. I just know I've got to get to my children.

They meet me at the door. "Daddy's been killed in an accident." I tell them immediately, my hand still on the doorknob. As horrible as it is, they have to know. We have to come to grips with this. I see the shock and terror on their young faces. My daughter is 12, my son, 6.

From the moment those words left my mouth on that Christmas Eve morning, my children and I have been coming to terms with what has happened to us. What do our lives mean now that our family has been tragically altered? We were so happy together. We defined ourselves in part by our family identity. We were the Jedd family. Who are we now?

This site is about our journey. Every family handles tragedy differently. This is how we handled ours—how we're still handling it.

Welcome. Let's walk a ways together.