Remembering...

Mid-November has not been my favorite time of year for quite sometime, 13yrs to be exact. What should have been the best time of my life...3 weeks before my wedding was rocked with an unforeseen tragedy.

When I was in high school one of the first people I met in Wake Forest was E. E was a couple yrs younger than me but we clicked instantly. She never met a stranger and everyone in town knew her and her family. She was loved by all who met her.

A couple years later I graduated and went off to college, my parents moved to Greensboro and then back to Wake Forest and we continued to keep in touch through letters (this was before email existed) and phone calls and we would see each other whenever I came home on weekends at football games,etc... The church my dad pastored in WF at that time just happened to be the church that all her extended family attended. Once she graduated and went to college she got in touch with me and said that one of her suite mates was dating a guy that I had dated a couple years before, small world. (I knew the girl, we had all gone to church together and been in the youth group together years before)....during this time she had contracted severe mono and had to be hospitalized on a couple of occasions, it looked really bad for her but she pulled through and made a complete recovery.

My parents moved back to Florida for my dad to Pastor a church closer to our hometown and extended family,Chris and I got engaged and she was one of the first people I called, she was sooo excited and could not wait to attend and we made plans to get together one weekend. That weekend never came...I was busy with wedding planning, work and showers. She had school and exams.

My dad came into town for the ordination service for Chris' uncle in Nov 1997, this was 3 weeks before my wedding. I had just moved into a new townhouse and had not gotten the cable turned on yet so we did not have access to the news that weekend and no one had my new phone number since I had only been in the place a week at the most... That Sunday morning we arrived at church in Durham went through the customary introduction and then the Pastor got up to do morning announcements and prayer requests...he began by talking about praying for the ex-boyfriends girlfriend and classmates of hers at Meredith College...at this point I got a pit in my stomach, he continued that if anyone had seen the news about the car accident in Rolesville (this is right next to Wake Forest where I am from) that the girl killed in the accident was the suitemate to the girlfriend...I never heard E's name, although he did say it, but it was already obvious to me it was her and it was obvious to the pastor and those around us that something was wrong.

I don't remember much after that except that Chris and my dad had to take me out of the service...it was an out of body experience to say the least. I am soo glad my dad was there with me that morning because it took him and my dad to get me out of the sanctuary. We spent the afternoon with my dad calling E's extended family to find out what had happened,etc...

Apparently on Sat morning E's dad went hunting and she and her mom were going to the nursing home to visit a family member. They had just left their house not 5-10min before when a lady in a car coming toward them had a heart attack, lost control and hit her and her mom head on. E didn't make it and her mom was severely injured.

The next couple of days were a blur, my dad had to go back to Fl and Chris and I went to the visitation. We got there early and still had to stand in line outside and then wrap our way through the funeral home before getting in to see the family. As soon as I got in the room I lost it, her cousin's wife who is a good friend of mine came and got me and walked with me to see E. Her mom was there in a wheelchair, bandaged up. The funeral the next day was just as hard as it was at Meredith in their big chapel.

It has now been 13 yrs...her mom is still in WF, her dad passed in Nov 2008 from cancer, I attended that funeral as well, such loving tributes to E at his funeral as well. I pray for her mom often as she has lost 2 kids (E had an older bro that passed when he was very little) and her husband. Although I think of E often throughout the year, this time of year is when it really hits home...I know she is in Heaven with my daddy, her dad and brother and our dear former "coach"...they are the FAB 5 up there right now, E knows what that means ;)