Life Goes On...Has Gone On

It's been 18 years today since 2 a.m. on  March 23, 1995 when I was awakened by a phone call from a Dallas Deputy Sheriff telling me that the father of my children had been killed in a car wreck--a drunk driving accident, no less, though Dave was neither drunk nor the driver--and that there would be news coverage about the horrible-ness of the accident, as there were two other passengers killed as well, and the driver literally walked away from the accident, and I might not want to watch it.   I kept the very nice deputy on the telephone for about two hours trying to find out as much of the truth as I could, especially the names of the other two killed in the car, since I was supposed to have been one of those people, and thought I knew who one of the others might have been.  After I hung up the phone with him, I lay there...dreading the arrival of morning, and the rest of our lives.

There are things you know that are going to hurt your children--immunizations, spankings, things of an emergency-medical-procedure nature--but there is nothing worse than the news that a very much loved father is gone forever.  The grief and dread I felt before they woke up, knowing that what I was about to tell them was going to change the rest of their lives--I thought it would kill me.  I wanted to run away, disappear, die myself.   I didn't think I could do it.  Thank God for my loving parents and my loving brother, who stood outside while I told my sweet children, privately, that there had been a terrible wreck and that David had been killed.  I don't know how the children bore such news.  We adults were devastated.  After I saw the news coverage at 6 a.m. we unplugged all the televisions in the house, so that the kids wouldn't accidentally see what I saw, which was their father's body draped in a sheet, being carried away on a gurney.  He was still wearing his trademark Converse hi-tops.  The accident scene itself was so terrible that several of the first responders had to seek counseling afterwards.

That terrible day, and the days and weeks that followed, are never far from my mind, even 18 years later.  There was a trial for the driver, who killed three people in a car he was driving too fast while under the influence, and the first trial was for Dave's death.  At the end of it Robert Allan Bryson was found guilty but given probation, because the jury said he had "suffered enough" over the deaths of his friends.  Fortunately, he was tried for the second person's death a few months later, and since he'd already received probation for a felony he did go to prison for 7 years.  SEVEN YEARS.  This man killed his friend Ted Berry, a nice guy with two little kids;  a young woman named Lucia whose awful luck it was to have agreed to a date with him that night, and David--who was only in the car because he needed a ride back to his own car.  I remember Rob's ex-wife coming out of the courtroom in angry tears after the second trial, asking aloud how she was going to explain to their little girl that she had to go visit daddy in a jail.  Though I've never charged a stranger before in my life, I wheeled on her like a crazy person and told her that she was lucky...because my own children had to visit their daddy at the cemetary.  I can't even say if my words made an impression on her.

But life goes on, and we put one foot in front of the other and lived through the awful first year, and then the second, so on and so on, up till today, 18 years later. My children were 12, 11 and 6 the morning their father died.  Today they are 30, 29 and 24.  One is a college graduate, one is about to graduate from college, one has made a name for himself in the small world-wide community of whitewater rafting.  It's a hard fact that we suffered through some awful, awful adolescent years, particularly the boys, who lost their dad at a time when boys need a dad much more than they need a mom.  Their sister, who was only 6 when he died, grieves as an adult that she doesn't remember Dave at all, and worries that talking about him with us will make us sad, so she doesn't.  There are two nephews, one named after him, and a niece, who know Uncle David in the stories that their mom and dad tell them.  Every birthday and holiday, his mom puts flowers on his grave, and on his father's grave--his dad joined him there seven years ago.  His sister and I laugh and cry over old times and old stories, and share with each other dreams in which he appears and talks to us. 

Life has gone on.  We've had sad times, but we have good memories.  God has been good to us, and has healed our hearts.  Eighteen years ago today, that healing didn't seem possible.

David Darrold Locke, you are missed and loved and remembered every day, even after all these years.