For Ron

24 years ago...

West Chester Police Report

3.2.2000

4:45 PM

Paoli Pike and Five Points Rd

West Chester

2 vehicle crash with injuries

Victim transported to Crozer Chester Trauma Center

TO RON

You should have died that day. March 2, 2000. You should have died on impact the moment the red pickup truck struck the driver’s side of your white Taurus, when the steering wheel rammed your chest, crushing your aorta. You should have died when you kicked open the driver’s side door and sprawled onto the macadam of Paoli Pike. You lay there, bleeding from your chest, your arm, your stomach, struggling to breathe as your collapsed lungs refused to inflate, as the man in the red pickup truck tried to help you up, as other drivers stopped and called 911. 

You should have died. In my more exhausted moments, light-headed from another interminable hospital stay full of lengthy surgeries and mysterious infections, I wondered if it might have been better if you had.

You lived, but a part of you did die that day, and in all the days that followed, pieces of you succumbing to the car crash that should have taken your life, physically and mentally stealing away who you had been, who I had been.  But your spirit was still strong, your love for us all remained, warming us for another 7,072 complicated and wearying days. Until you were ready. Until WE were ready. 

Until there were no more days, just a chair where you’d finally given up your spirit, at last called Home by a loving God. Just a huge hole in my heart where you had lived.

And still do.