It’s a sad day.
My cousin ,Sherianne, will be buried today. She was a beautiful woman, the age of my younger sisters, wife and mother of two.
She was killed in when her SUV was struck broadside by a dump truck that ran a traffic signal. Her car was dragged across the highway and pushed into a ditch. She died of massive internal injuries after being sent by life-flight to Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Her mother, my aunt, in the passenger seat survived with massive bruising and cracked ribs. It’s a small blessing that my cousin’s two young children were not in the vehicle that day.
Sherianne’s two children, both under 10, are now motherless. Her husband is without his wife. They recently bought a fixer-upper house and her husband took a new job that requires significant travel.
Her children don’t know how to deal with their mother’s death, of course. In the way of children, they are inadvertently causing more pain to their father. The five-year old told his father he’d have to find them a new mommy because they needed to have one.
Sherianne’s brother is mentally retarded. In his mid-thirties, he has the mind of a child. He went to the closet where the old keepsakes are kept and found his favorite childhood stuffed toy. That toy now sleeps with him in his bed at night.
He lives now with his mother and father and Sherianne was always going to be the one that provided his care when his mother and father became too old. The family cannot deal with that issue yet but the future of her brother will probably be one involving hired caretakers instead of his family.
Friends of this locally well-know and well-liked family are providing information that suggest at least four fatalities have occurred due to this trucking company.
The driver claims he was unable to stop but the lack of skid marks before the impact point and their presence after suggest the brakes on the truck were fine. The sight-line to that intersection is over 500 yards, it was a clear day and dry pavement. All indications are that the driver simply didn’t want to stop for the signal. He left his lane with the intention of driving through the intersection in the turn lane.
One life gone from this planet. It warrants a single article in the local paper, an obituary, and a picture. Two families lives will be changed forever because of one impatient truck driver.
If you’re a believer, I ask that you pray for this family today.
It’s odd that as I’ve typed this, I’ve had to keep going back and correcting the verbs to the past-tense.
